With the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, an increasing wave of disinformation started hovering around the conflict, meddling with public opinions in Europe, making even more pressing the overarching need to strengthen independent fact-checkers to ensure a continuous, in-depth, and fact-based analysis of the war-related information conveyed by media and shared online across different platforms.

Responding to this urgent need, EMIF opened a Special Funding Round for Ukraine on 25 February. The call ran until 29 April 2022 and received proposals from five countries.

Having completed the evaluations, the EMIF will support two projects designed to increase the coverage, depth, and speed of fact-checking activities directly and indirectly related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The approved projects will focus on capacity building for fact-checking in Ukraine led by Agence France-Press (France) and reinforcing and amplifying reliable reporting on Ukraine led by Euractiv Media Network B.V. (Belgium).

Additionally, the 2^nd regular Funding Round of the “Boosting Fact-Checking Activities” call closed on 30 June with 13 proposals received from organisations based in nine countries: five submitted under priority “Urgent Actions” and eight under “Scale-Up”.  The total amount requested in this funding round was €795,931.47 for an allocation of €435.000.

The next cut-off date of this permanently open Call for Proposals is on 31 October 2022.