In May 2024 the EUfactcheck programme successfully factchecked the EU elections for the second time. From academic year 2024-205 onwards the EUfactcheck programme will offer two different ‘tracks’ for EJTA member schools to participate.
* Individual schools can still use the EUfactcheck website as a platform to publish their students’ factchecks. This can be done at any convenient moment throughout the year, that fits the curriculum of the study programme. Please contact the EUfactcheck editorial team.
* Each year another EJTA member school will organise an intensive factchecking week, the EUfactcheck Lab, funded by Erasmus short mobility. Other EJTA member schools are welcome to join with up to 6 students and one teacher (Erasmus Blended Intensive Programme). Please contact the EUfactcheck programme manager for more details. In 2024 the EUfactcheck Lab covered the EU elections, in 2025 the topic is ‘Climate Reporting’.
EUfactcheck, an initiative of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) fights mis- and disinformation about European policies and topics. Journalism students from all over Europe factcheck claims and statements made by politicians and others and rate them. Our focus is not to debunk fake news but to give correct information to the reader.
At the start of the 2024 European election campaign, German politician Marc Jongen is running for the right-wing populist party AfD. In his campaign speech, he said that the illegal entry of migrants must be stopped in Germany and that migrants who have already entered the country must be returned to their home countries. He…
Kai Mykkänen, Minister of Climate and the Environment (The National Coalition Party – EPP) claimed that Finland voted against the European nature restoration law because of its excessive costs: “According to the Commission’s impact assessment, the costs are the highest in the EU for Finland in relation to the size of its economy.” The claim…
80% of European agricultural funding goes to just 20% of companies. But does three quarters effectively go to only a fifth of companies? EUfactcheck found out that these figures were indeed studied a few years ago. The claim turned out to be correct. On 9 February, Vooruit (Flemish social democrats) politician Bruno Tobback shared a…
Belgian MEP Frédérique Ries (Renew Europe) claimed in the plenary meeting of April 10th 2024, that 30 million European citizens suffer from a rare disease. She made that claim in the context of the biggest pharmaceutical reform Renew Europe puts its shoulder under. Do 30 million Europeans really have a rare disease? According a study…
In the documentary “Trans is a Trend: How an Ideology is Changing Our Country”, published on the German news website NIUS.de, authors Judith Sevinc Basad and Jan A. Karon claim that gender-affirming surgeries in Germany have increased from 120 in 2005 to 2.598 in 2021. They also argue that being trans is a dangerous trend…
In the “Europawahlprogramm 2024” (European Election Program 2024) of the German political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), alleged dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines are highlighted. The program claims a direct connection between these vaccines and excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. This claim turns out to be false. “Due to (…) an alarming excess mortality,…
During a broadcast of the Flemish current affairs program “De Zevende Dag”, Klaas Slootmans, a member of the far-right party Vlaams Belang, claimed that in the next 25 years one billion African immigrants will come to (Western) Europe. After checking the facts, it turns out that Slootmans’ statement is false. In the episode of De…
On March 30, 2024, LB.ua reported that the German Bundestag has approved the participation of 35 political parties in the upcoming European Parliament elections. Among the approved parties are the controversial environmental group “The Last Generation”. Lesser-known parties such as the Party of Reason and the Party of Traditional Medical Research for Rejuvenation will also…
In the German “Welt” live TV debate on 11th April 2024 between the right-wing Björn Höcke of the AfD and the moderately right-wing Mario Voigt of the CDU, Björn Höcke said: “It is wrong that Brexit has damaged the UK.” He went on to say that “Germany is in recession” and “the British economy is…
“Euro membership is an economic detriment to Finland”, claims EU election candidate and member of Finnish parliament Kaisa Garedew from the Perussuomalaiset party (Finnish national conservatives). Although the matter can be viewed from multiple viewpoints, the claim, published by the party’s newspaper Suomen Uutiset on March 26, 2024, turns out to be mostly false. Euro…
Human reproduction is essential for the continuance of the human species. Antinatalism is the absolute rejection of human birth. A large number of antinatalists embrace antinatalism for climate political motives. Is society ready for such drastic measures to provide a future for the living? Interview with: Verena Brunschweiger Leave your comments, thoughts and suggestions in the…
The Lobachevsky University atop (picture taken by Daniel Buylov) and the Jade University of applied sciences (picture taken by Jan Claas Rosebrock) at the bottom – there’s more to the picture than meets the eye. Being neutral and objective is one of THE standards by which qualitative journalism is measured. But truth is an abstract…
Nowadays, 27 countries are members of the European Union, that was founded in 1993. All of them benefit from democracy, security and free movement of products and capital. The aim of this Blogpost is a conceptional experiment, which takes place in Europe – but pictures the countries without the reliable union. All members have left the…
Ever since COVID-19 changed our daily lives, the news seem overloaded with varying information on the pandemic. Updates on the vaccination rate and the number of infected people as well as videos of demonstrations on the most recent measures by the government and articles on the newest conspiracy theories about the coronavirus make one feel extremely…
Women flee to Germany in search of better prospects. Once in Germany, a lot of them fall into unemployment, unlike many of their male counterparts. But why do refugee women find it so much harder to get a job than refugee men? During our fact-check titled “After about five years, approximately half of refugees are…
The village where I grew up is small, everyone here knows everything about each other, and news spreads quickly: “Naira’s daughter married a city boy” “Nika went to America to study”, “Marina’s cow is pregnant.” But people care about politics and foreign relations, too. In the past, those who came from the fields used to sit in…
On 16 March 2021, BBC Online reported on negative health effects linked to noise pollution. During the fact check, we learned that vibrations and noises not only irritate a person and cause discomfort but can also lead to negative health consequences such as cardiovascular diseases including hypertension, gastrointestinal ulcers, vegetative disorders, mental illnesses, and hearing…
This blog post reveals why the tweet of an UN representative, claiming that just 0.3% of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in lower-income countries, was not as easy to fact check as initially believed. Strictly, the statement can be seen as false, but does the complexity of the according figures even allow a definite judgment?…
It is the year 2070, and I have to explain to young people what ‘a tree’ is. I have to tell them that the Amazon desert used to be full of them, but they have been burnt down. That our land is one of the reasons why we can no longer breathe. Tell me: how…
It still seems like serendipity for refugees to receive an authorisation in their destination countries. We’ve listed several stats to explain the asylum process difficulties and taken a look at the different initial situations of Croatia, Germany, Greece, France and Italy, as well as the role of Turkey. For further details our factcheck: “Mostly true:…
EUFACTCHECK is the fact-checking project of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) that intends to build a sustainable curriculum unit on fact-checking within a European network of Journalism schools.
Through fact-checking European political claims and trying to tackle misinformation, we want our students and our public to grow a deeper insight and interest in democratic processes, both on national and European level.
EUFACTCHECK wishes to motivate fact-based debate in the EU and to stimulate media and information literacy.
After the success of the students’ publications, the participants of EJTA’s fact-checking project EUFACTCHECK decided at the EJTA AGM in Paris (July 2019) to move on with the project and to take new steps in the academic year 2019-2020.
By January-February 2019 a manual with guidelines and tips & tricks was published. In February 2020 a second Bootcamp will be organised in Ljubljana, with financial help from the Evens Foundation. This Train the Trainer focused on Central Eastern European countries, some new schools joined this project.
During corona the EJTA-schools continued to verify claims and publish fact checks. Now we are looking ahead to the 2024 EU elections.
For information about the EUfactcheck project please contact the programme manager: [email protected]
