The European Commission happens to finance various fact-checking groups under dubious circumstances. Each of these groups may have received hundreds of thousands of euros. However, the exact financing criteria are unclear, since some of these groups make no effort whatsoever to appear independent.

Following a series of threats by Ursula von der Leyen, it comes as little surprise that the European Commission uses money as a leverage to try and achieve its goals. A few days ahead of Italy’s general elections, the Commission chief warned that if the Italians do not vote as expected, the EC may use similar tools than in the case of Hungary and Poland, who are being blackmailed with unpaid EU funds.

Against this backdrop, it is hardly surprising that the EC is pouring millions of euros from EU taxpayers’ money into the editorial offices financed by oligarch George Soros. Earlier, the European Commission had granted several millions of euros to the establishment of fact-checking groups under dubious circumstances. Each group may have received up to hundreds of thousands of euros.

One of these collaborations is led by the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency, which has entered into a strategic cooperation with Magyar Jeti Zrt, the publisher of the opposition 444.hu news portal. The result is a „fact-checking” micro-blog named Lakmusz. However, the exact criteria applied by AFP – the EC’s contractual partner – in selecting 444, which can hardly be described as an independent outlet, remains unclear.

The EC’s call for proposals sets out quite a few requirements. Each centre must coordinate national/multinational multidisciplinary teams, which include media practitioners, fact-checkers, academic researchers and other stakeholders to create a network to „detect, analyse and expose disinformation campaigns and their impact on society.” The fact-checkers’ independence is another key requirement, but if we take a close look at the names of the selected fact-checkers – who were recently caught making a huge blunder – this is clearly not the case.

Their team leader is Blanka Zoldi, who works for 444.hu, among other companies, but the entire editorial staff is exclusively made up of representatives of the leftist-liberal press. It is known that 444 was backed by the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), which receives support from one of the its main sponsors oligarch Soros, or more precisely, the tycoon’s Open Society Foundations. But, more on this later.

In a bid to assist Lakmusz, an advisory board has been set up recently, involving well-known members of Soros’s network,such as Stefania Kapronczay, executive director of the Soros-funded Society for Civil Liberties (TASZ), Robert Kotroczo, news director of RTL Hungary, Peter Kreko, managing director of Political Capital, Jozsef Peter Martin, executive director of Transparency International in Hungary, and Marta Pardavi, co-chair of the Helsinki Committee. These latter organisations have all received generous support from the network of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

It is worthy of mention that, in a political sense, George Soros is fully committed to the US Democratic Party, and is one of their biggest donors. He also supports numerous other issues that clearly serve the interests of the liberal, leftist, globalist elite.

Based on the above, it is hard to presume that journalists working for 444.hu, a portal funded by oligarch Soros, are fully independent. By the way, the fact that the the prospective media analysts mentioned in the EC’s call for proposals work for a media blog precludes their independence. In light of Ursula von der Leyen’s warnings, these activities may have the same similar political purpose as blackmailing Italians by withholding their EU funds.

V4NA has sent a written inquiry to AFP. We asked the French news agency about how the jobs were allocated to journalists who are being sponsored at Lakmusz via 444.hu, and how they decided on the members of the advisory board. We also want to know why they believe that these Hungarian media workers can perform their fact-checking role credibly and independently, even though their work is financed by the European Commission, from the money of EU taxpayers.

In the next parts of our series, we will examine the question of who’s checking the fact-checkers, and whether they’ll face any consequences for misrepresenting facts. We will also reveal the exact sources where these supposedly „independent fact-checkers” are being funded from.