EU staff don’t lose their pensions for criticising the EU
A viral post falsely claims senior EU employees don’t criticise the EU because they’d lose their pensions. Read
Fact checks
Joël Reland
Fact checker (former)
Joël joined Full Fact in 2017 as an intern. He researched and wrote fact checks. He previously worked for Policy in Practice, analysing the impact of the transition to Universal Credit on local authorities, and for the polling and research consultancy Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. He has a BA in History from the University of Cambridge, and an MSc in International Political Theory from the University of Edinburgh.
Claim Brexit is about concealing offshore accounts is baseless
New EU tax laws aim to stop tax avoidance practices by companies. They do not aim to make owners of offshore bank accounts “come clean”. Read
Fact checks
How much do Lib Dem MPs claim in expenses?
A Facebook post gets the expenses claims of Lib Dem MPs roughly right, but their collective claims are around average for all MPs overall. Read
Fact checks
Is Luxembourg the biggest beneficiary of the EU?
A Facebook post falsely claims that Luxembourg receives the most EU spending, relative to what it pays in. Read
Fact checks
Environment
Does badger culling work?
Research suggests that badger culling has a limited impact on the spread of bovine TB. We have seen some small reductions in bovine TB cases in recent years. Read
Fact checks
Viral post has flawed understanding of EU debt
The EU acknowledges that Brexit will leave a “sizeable gap” in its budget, but has plans to manage it. Read
Fact checks
There was not a 12kg rat in London
A photo of a rat makes it look deceptively big. It almost certainly weighed less than 3kg, rather than 12kg as claimed. Read
Fact checks
The price of Freddos has risen five times faster than inflation
The price of Freddos has risen much faster than inflation, and so has the value of the minimum wage. Read
Fact checks
Economy, Business & Finance
Scotland doesn’t have the highest taxes in Europe
At his first Prime Minister’s questions, Boris Johnson incorrectly claimed Scotland has the highest taxes in Europe. Read
Fact checks
Europe
GATT 24: new argument, same old problems
A new claim about GATT 24 runs into an old problem: the EU probably won’t agree to it, and it doesn’t explain that it would mean significant barriers to trade with the EU. Read
Fact checks
