Deadline: 2-Sep-25
The European Commission (EC) has launched the European Network of Factcheckers Program is to support the growth of a European Network of Factcheckers, which will deepen the language coverage and operational capacity of factchecking in Europe.
Objectives
- The core objectives to achieve are:
- Expand fact-checking capacity in Europe, and establish in particular more solid factchecking capacity in Member States with insufficient fact-checking coverage
- Support the capacity and readiness of European fact-checkers to respond to emergency situations or other particular disinformation pressures in one or more Member States
- Provide support and protection for fact-checkers against harassment
- Equip European fact-checkers with state-of-the-art skills, expertise and tools
- Support cooperation, peer support and exchange within the European fact-checking community
- Create a European repository of fact-checks, capable of aggregating content from associated fact-checking organisations
- Explore sustainable business models for fact-checkers in Europe, including through dedicated use cases of the repository of fact-checks.
Scope
- The scope of this action is to support the capacity of the European fact-checking community while aiming towards making fact-checking available in all EU Member States and languages (where relevant covering also minority languages of EU Member States), building on, complementing and further expanding activities carried out by the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) and other European fact-checking initiatives like the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN).
- The geographical scope comprises all EU Member States, as well as candidate and accession countries or EU neighbouring countries that are associated to the Digital Europe programme in view of the specific vulnerabilities to disinformation and Russian interference in this region.
Funding Information
- Available Budget: EUR 5 000 000
Outcomes and Deliverables
- In addition to the administration of the project’s implementation and the issuing of grants to third parties (c.f. ‘Outcomes to be implemented via third parties’, the consortium will be responsible for the delivery of at least the following three tasks:
- Implementing a Fact-Checkers Protection Scheme
- The consortium will assume the responsibility for the implementation of a Fact-Checkers Protection Scheme. The scheme should develop concrete operational support actions accessible to fact-checkers and fact-checking organisations in the EU and EU candidate and accession countries or EU neighbouring countries that are associated to the Digital Europe programme, covering assistance in matters such as legal affairs, cybersecurity, psychological support, trainings on dealing with harassment and intimidation, and support for relocation. The protection scheme will be developed in cooperation with EDMO, building on the results of the EDMO pilot protection scheme
- Building a repository of fact-checks
- The repository should be designed based on the demands of the fact-checking community. Access to the repository should be designed to foster new commercial opportunities for the organisations injecting content in the repository as well as to support activities aiming at monitoring and analysing the phenomenon of disinformation for the public good. The repository should therefore have an Application Programming Interface (API) allowing for structured retrieval of relevant data.
- Creation of fact-checking emergency response capacity
- The consortium should build a framework capable of preparing for and responding to any situation where a sudden increase of harmful disinformation occurs, including emergency situations. This capacity should cover all 27 EU Member States and in particular those more exposed to disinformation and with less factchecking capacity.
- Implementing a Fact-Checkers Protection Scheme
Targeted Stakeholders
- Targeted stakeholders for the consortium are organisations such as: Fact-checking organisations certified by either the EFCSN or IFCN (see section 6 for more information), Civil society organisations, News Media, Academic institutions and commercial entities providing services which are relevant for the achievement of the call objectives.
Eligibility Criteria
- In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
- be legal entities (public or private bodies)
- be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
- non-EU countries:
- listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Digital Europe Programme
- Beneficiaries and affiliated entities must register in the Participant Register — before submitting the proposal — and will have to be validated by the Central Validation Service (REA Validation).
For more information, visit EC.