Questions tagged [europe]
For questions about claims based in Europe, or limited to Europe.
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Will the 2019 EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market ban memes?
There have been lots of reports recently about how the EU are trying to ban memes. For example:
Trusted reviews
The European Union (EU) is pressing ahead with efforts to ban online memes under new ...
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3
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Are there vaccine ingredients which may not be disclosed ("hidden", "trade secret", or similar)?
I sometimes encounter people claiming that there are ingredients in vaccines that can be kept secret by the manufacturer. I would be surprised to hear this, because the manufacturers have to conduct ...
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Are there 300,000 items in the average American household, and 10,000 items in the average European household?
There is a trope that can be found in many articles discussing topics such as consumerism or minimalism: the average number of items that can be found in an average household. The number that is ...
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2
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Are there any women in the top one hundred chess players?
According to this video, a Polish politician named Janusz Korwin-Mikke claimed:
Do you know how many women are in the first hundred of chess players? I tell you – no one.
Is he correct that zero ...
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1
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Did Martin Schulz say that it is not the EU philosophy that the crowd can decide its fate?
In the last few days, some people are attributing to European Parliament President Martin Schulz the following statement:
The British have violated the rules. It is not the EU philosophy that the ...
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3
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Is this map of terrorist attacks in Europe accurate?
Recently this map of terrorist attacks in Europe went viral and was reposted many times in social media. Does it present actual data about terrorist attacks?
Background: The map gained popularity ...
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Was EU flag's design inspired by the statue of Virgin Mary?
In this video it is claimed that the person who designed it was passing the statue of Virgin Mary with 12 stars and applied it to the design of the flag. How much of this claim is true?
Footnote: ...
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Is it legal to hire only beautiful people?
Josephine Fairley wrote a column in the Telegraph claims that it is perfectly legal to hire only beautiful people.
But while it's illegal to discriminate on the grounds of gender, sex, race, religion,...
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Is this "fall of industrial production" graph accurate?
A candidate to the French presidency tweeted
The fall in industrial production in Spain, Italy and France of course has a link with the euro.
However I have a couple of doubts on its accuracy ...
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Is Spain ”the second most mountainous country in Europe”?
One hiking book my family owns described Spain as the second most mountainous country in Europe. Several online sources claim the same:
Spain then and now:
After Switzerland, Spain is the most ...
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1
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Drop in IQ due to immigration?
An alt-right web site, "Red Ice" (apparently belonging to Henrik Palmgren), proposes that there's a nearly worldwide decrease in IQ due to immigration. The Red Ice piece apparently originated from unz....
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2
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Did NATO promise not to expand into Eastern and Central Europe?
In its own fact sheet NATO denies Russia's claims that NATO promised not to expand:
Russian officials claim that US and German officials promised in 1990 that NATO would not expand into Eastern and ...
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Has there been a 1101% increase in excess deaths among children aged 0-14 across Europe in 2022?
According to the blogger Peter Sweden:
If we take a look at the excess deaths among children aged 0-14 across Europe, there has been a HORRIFYING 1101% increase in excess deaths so far this year ...
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Did people blaspheme deliberately to be tried in the Medieval European Inquisition courts instead of other secular courts?
On the Wikipedia page about "Criticism of the Catholic Church", there was recently (though removed by an editor since this question was asked) a little paragraph about the Medieval European ...
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Will taxing EU-made cars at 25% invert the US-EU trade deficit? [closed]
Trump claimed at a rally in West Virginia yesterday that taxing European Union cars at 25% would take the 151bn dollars trade deficit (with the EU) and turn it on its head, i.e. into a US surplus of ...
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Did Hamas dig up EU-funded water pipes and turn them into rockets?
A recurring narrative/allegation in debates about the current Hamas/Israel conflict is that Hamas has dug up EU steel pipes and turned them into Qassam rockets. The main sources for this appear to be ...
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Did (former) German Minister Manfred Lahnstein admit that Germany wanted the EMS in order to get a competitive edge over other European countries?
A 2017 article about the European Monetary System (EMS) in Foreign Policy relates this story:
But there was always a suspicion that Germany was trying to get long-term trade advantages from linking ...
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Are the majority of EU member-states' local laws made in Brussels?
With the upcoming elections for the European Union, there are claims that most local laws are dictated by the European union these days.
Image source: Buzzfeed
It has always been my understanding ...
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1
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Will Europe soon have more Muslims than Christians?
This story, which appeared in the UK tabloid The Sun (and widely repeated elsewhere), has also been doing the rounds on social media.
The original story has the strapline:
Muslims will soon ...
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Is Nazi a diminutive of Ignatius?
The German Wikipedia page for Nazi claims that the word Nazi is a diminutive form of Ignatius (Ignatz). The cited source is etymonline.com:
The 24th edition of Etymologisches Wörterbuch der ...
user7920
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1
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Do Europeans have a greater chance of making it into the top 1% of income earners than Americans?
In a 2011 Vanity Fair article, Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote:
America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but ...
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Do a significant proportion of the British public think "no-deal" Brexit means staying in the EU?
Brexit is the plan to take the UK out of the European Union. The way the law is currently framed means that this will happen automatically at the end of march 2019 if no transition deal is arranged. ...
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Is the level of support for evolution decreasing in Europe?
The following three articles claim (or suggest) that the level of support for evolution (among the big public) (see wiki > level of support for evolution for definition) is decreasing in Europe.
...
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Did the EU threaten to sue in connection with "Comic Sans" having an eye on the Euro symbol?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans_MS#cite_note-2
Earlier versions of Comic Sans had an eye in the Euro sign. This was
later removed because 'The EU was going to sue us over that.'[2]
The ...
user4951
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3
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Did Europe have a Covid-19 case in December 2019?
CNN reports that a Frenchman named Amirouche Hammar had Covid-19 in December in Paris. This was supposedly discovered after old samples were re-checked for the Covid-19 virus.
Alas there's hardly any ...
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1
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Do countries deliberately avoid winning Eurovision?
Spanish singer told to lose Eurovision? claims that countries deliberately avoid winning the Eurovision Song Contest because of the expense of hosting it. It claims that:
Montenegro, Andora and ...
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15
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2
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Are these human rights in the UK derived from the ECHR?
In Patrick Stewart's sketch "What has the ECHR ever done for us?" concerning the Brexit, he plays the Prime Minister of the UK and asks (satirically):
[..] and what has the European Convention for ...
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Is there an EU regulation which says flags must be from non-flamable material?
There is currently a viral video spreading around on social networks of an (alleged) anti-eu protester trying to burn an EU flag but has difficulty setting it on fire because, as the post claims,
...
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Has immigration from Eastern Europe impacted UK youth unemployment?
MigrationWatch UK is a think-tank that argues for lower immigration levels into the UK.
In a 2012 Briefing Paper they claimed:
Youth unemployment in the UK increased by almost 450,000 in the
...
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1
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Is the recent surge in bitcoin prices driven by Cypriot investors?
There are numerous stories out there linking the rise in bitcoin prices seen in the last few weeks with events in Cyprus.
Some stories go as far as claiming that Cypriots are buying the things ...
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2
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Do one in three workers in Romania work for minimum wage?
I've read on a website that I don't know much about that (in 2017)
Romania is a country viewed as an economic miracle in the European Union.
Its unemployment hovers around five per cent, its growth ...
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13
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Does the UK provide 50% of EU's waters? And does this imply anything about fishing rights?
Leading Brexiteer Owen Paterson wrote in an article in the Telegraph about fisheries:
At present, the UK provides 50 per cent of the EU’s waters but receives only a 25 per cent share of the Total ...
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Is Sweden 'the most dangerous country in Europe [EU] today' (when it comes to violent crime)?
Bild makes the claims. [Google translated below]
Schweden ist heute das gefährlichste Land in Europa.
[Sweden is the most dangerous country in Europe today.]
In der EU werden durchschnittlich acht ...
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1
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Is Hungary's border fence with Serbia (almost) entirely electrified?
The BBC (March, 2019) says Hungary's border fence with Serbia consists of "170 km of electrified barbed wire" (at 0:30-0:35 in the video). 170km is basically the whole length of the border ...
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Was a "large number" of new COVID-19 clusters in the United States seeded by travellers from Europe?
It has been reported in relation to the recent US travel ban on the EU's 26-country Schengen area that
The President justified the ban by saying the EU had failed to take the same precautions as ...
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1
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Is the UK's trade with the EU artifically inflated by having to ship its exports via Europe?
I was talking to a pro-Brexit UK woman who made some... interesting claims about UK-EU trade that I hadn't heard before and couldn't immediately counter.
She claimed the UK's apparently very large ...
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Are five million Muslims marching on to Europe?
This article claims that five million Muslims are attempting to move to European countries.
Apparently the numbers that they’ve been selling to their unsuspecting populations are wrong by at least ...
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2
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Was the UK the third poorest member of the EU despite being the second biggest net contributor in 1979?
This video on YouTube of Margaret Thatcher at the EU Dublin Council on the 29th of November 1979 seems to suggest that the UK was the second biggest net contributor to the EU and also the third ...
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Are bars in Italy using pasta as straws?
It’s being reported in a lot of places that bars in Italy are using pasta as straws: 1 ,2, 3, 4. They all cite the same source of a Reddit post here, with a picture of one of these pasta straws in ...
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Is Russia spreading fake news about some countries' management of COVID-19?
According to a Financial Times article, an EU report warns about the diffusion of fake news by Russian media, in an attempt to discredit involved governments and aggravate the ongoing crisis.
Can ...
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Did Germany and France offer help to Italy in the Covid-19 crisis?
An opinion piece published yesterday by DW says:
The first thing that fell by the wayside, as always in times of crisis, was solidarity. It was Italy, the first country hit by the Corona crisis — and ...
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Was there a spike in hate crimes after the Brexit referendum?
Was there a spike in hate crimes after the Brexit referendum?
Example claim: 'Horrible spike' in hate crime linked to Brexit vote, Met police say
A “horrible spike” in hate crime after Britain’s ...
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Is US ahead or behind of EU in terms of broadband Internet access?
Today New America Foundation has published a report "The Cost of Connectivity 2013:
A comparison of high-speed Internet prices in 24 cities around the world"
It has been covered by media, mostly in ...
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Does George Soros support plans for immigrants flows into Europe?
The idea that Geoge Soros and his Open Society Foundation is promoting the flows of immigrants into Europe is often cited as one of the main reasons why these flows exist and are not stopping anytime ...
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Has freedom of movement of people lead to a reduction in wages and worsening of working conditions in the UK?
Has freedom of movement of people lead to a reduction of wages, and a worsening of working conditions, in the UK?
From 'If you've got money, you vote in ... if you haven't got money, you vote out'
...
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Did Britain borrow $120 billion in 1945?
This copy-paste has being doing the rounds of local newspaper letters pages and dodgy hard-core pro-Brexit Facebook pages, etc:
JEAN Claude Juncker should be forced to walk past every white ...
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Do EU sanctions prevent Russian visitors from bringing their smartphones/toothpaste with them into the EU?
This morning a Russian media company RBC reported that (vaguely translated from Russian) "EU prohibited Russians to enter the EU with personal cars, smartphones and shampoo". A similar story ...
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Are one in five children in Europe victims of sexual violence?
I was recently asked to sign a petition for a campaign against sexual violence against children.
The petition claimed that one in five children are victims of some form of sexual violence in Europe. ...
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Did European Muslim protestors carry signs "Shariah for the Netherlands", "Islam Will Dominate the World, Freedom Can Go to Hell"
Does the following alleged photograph represent an actual demonstration by real self-identified Muslims, in Europe?
I found at: http://www.billionbibles.org/sharia/sharia-europe.html
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Are three quarters of immigrants "flooding Europe today" from central Africa?
In a November 16, 2016 op-ed in the New York Times titled Donald Trump, Help Heal the Planet’s Climate Change Problem, Thomas L. Friedman claims:
When you visit the Pentagon, ask the generals about ...
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