Responding to European journalistic interests and needs

Our core business is facilitating journalism grants for investigative, independent journalism in Europe. A 2016 evaluation concluded that our competitive advantage is our flexibility in terms of the geographic and thematic focus of our grants in comparison with other similar grant makers. Like us, the journalists we support believe it is important that topics for investigations be driven by journalists themselves. In this way, Journalismfund Europe respects the diversity of issues and interests throughout the region and does not artificially drive journalistic agendas. We therefore seek to preserve this flexibility and bottom-up approach.

Journalismfund Europe is perceived as a well-connected and professional player in the field. In 2012, we were commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department of Budgetary affairs to prepare a report on the state of investigative journalism in 27 EU member states with a special focus on the interaction between European institutions and investigative journalists.

In 2013, we have been awarded the Prize for the Freedom and Future of the Media 2013 for our efforts to help secure the future of investigative journalism. According to Stephan Seeger, managing director of the Leipziger Medienstiftung, which awards the prize, the initiators of Journalismfund's European Cross-Border Grant Programme deserve the prize because they help "give investigative journalism a future, which is crucial to an open and pluralistic society, even in time of a media crisis“.

Impact stories

Below are examples of the outcomes of just a handful of investigative journalism stories we supported. We will continue to build on our ability to support the development of exemplary in-depth journalism in Europe.

Bringing tools for investigations (2023)

An investigation made by Carlotta Indiano and Ariane Lavrilleux  showed that the world’s steel leader ArcelorMittal has exceeded several pollution limits authorized by European, Italian and French law for a decade. Meanwhile, the company headquartered in Luxembourg has received billions euros of public funds and indirect subsidies.  

Thanks to this investigation, the organization France Nature Environnement (the largest federation of associations for the protection of nature & the environment in ) has denounced ArcerlorMittal in the courts of Lille and Marseille for "endangerment by emissions in the air" and "degradation of air quality"

Taking companies to court (2022)

The French Oil Company Perenco S.A. is now facing the Paris Court of Justice. This is the first case in which a French company has been held liable for environmental damage caused abroad. This case, researched by Lea Szulewicz, Dorian Cabrol, Alexandre Brutelle and Baron Nkoyproves, proves that Perenco S.A. had the means to act but did not take the necessary measures to prevent and stop the pollution linked to the group's oil activities in the DRC. Perenco may now be forced to repair the ecological damage already caused in the DRC to stop the pollution, and prevent future environmental damage. On the other hand, French energy transition minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher was placed at the heart of a discrete inheritance scheme linked to hedge funds based in tax haven countries. Her father, a long-serving Perenco executive, set up a company to donate a €1.2 million investment portfolio to the minister’s children.

Read the full story

Putting industries and oligarchs under the spotlight (2022)

A leading company is now under spotlight by the European Environmental Agency for potential unlicensed extraction. As part of a cross-border project to investigate the peat extraction industries in Ireland and Latvia, the Irish investigative platform Noteworthy has examined the impacts of unlicensed peat extraction across the country. The findings of that cross-border investigation revealed a system of largely unregulated peat extraction that continues to this day where the Irish State has largely faltered on its enforcement role, including that no local or national authority maintains a register of peat companies or the amount of peat extracted for commercial purposes.

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Businessmen included in the EU sanctions package (2022)

An investigation of Šarūnas Černiauskas (Lithuania), Irma Bogdanoviciute (Lithuania) and Stanislau Ivashkevich (Belarus) followed the trail of the Belarusian elites. After that, Alexander Zaytsev and Aliaksei Aleksin, two Belarusian businessmen considered to be close to the Alexander Lukashenko regime, were officially included in the EU sanctions package that started on 21 June 2021.

When the sanctions against Aleksin and Zaytsev were imposed, the official sanction implementation decision mirrored the team's stories in a large extent. Companies mentioned in the stories were indicated to be the source of the oligarchs' benefiting from their relationship with the regime, further stressing the importance of the investigative work.

"Sometimes, it takes years for an investigative story to have a clear impact. Sometimes, it never happens. In this case, international sanctions came 8 months after we ran our first story, and this is the first time when my work makes this kind of an impact. In my perspective, investigative journalism isn't about punishing people. It's about getting the truth out to the world - even from regimes as tight as the one in Belarus. And once the truth is out, change will come sooner or later", underlines the team leader Sarunas Cerniauskas. 

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Making pressure on lawmakers (2022)

EU lawmakers are now under pressure to act after a cross border investigation revealed that 70,000 to 90,000 annual asbestos-related deaths occur in Europe — not including the growing number of cancers by exposure at homes, schools, hospitals, and offices. The European Parliament asked for a broad asbestos strategy under different headings. The headings include a framework directive binding members to act, new occupational exposure limits (OEL) for workers 100 times lower than the present OEL, a compulsory register of buildings where asbestos is present, and a pan-EU recognition and compensation scheme for asbestos victims.

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Generating prosecutor’s investigations (2022)

A French anti-terrorist prosecutor's office has opened a preliminary investigation about complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity on the association SOS Chrétiens d'Orient based on the investigation by journalists Ariane Lavrilleux, Frank Andrews, and Elie Guckert. 

In Italy, two months after the broadcast of The Logging Business, a video investigation, the prominent anti-mafia public prosecutor Nicola Gratteri coordinated a big police operation with arrests on the woody biomass supply chain in Calabria. The CEOs of the 5 Calabrian biomass facilities are now under investigation for fraud for having asked for undue public subsidies and for having burned wood that originated in illegally logged forests. The same supported project led the Italian party M5S to withdraw its vote for the request for incentives for forestry biomass power plants and to state that “there are controversial issues regarding biomass”

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Making instant change (2022)

The research by journalists Eelco van Wieringen (Buro Publieke Werken, Holland), Micael Pereira (Expresso Portugal), and Twan Kroon (researcher, Holland) showed that the age of port wines is often incorrect. Based on that investigation, some port wines were reported to the Food Fraud Network, a partnership of the European food authorities, and in some countries like the Netherlands, some port wines have been withdrawn for sale. “Deception with Port” research got an immediate impact just after its first publication. Something similar happened after a research that asked if the EU’s craze for lithium fuels destructive mining operations in Serbia. The Jadar mining project is on hold now.

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Collateral impact of the Chlorpyrifos Case: story supported by Journalismfund Europe influences EU and US policies (2021)

Residues of Chlorpyrifos, a dangerous insecticide, have been found in fruit baskets and samples of human urine across Europe. Chlorpyrifos is a chemical that kills insects on growing vegetables and fruit. The series of stories, funded by Journalismfund Europe, uncover its effect on adults and children, the spread of the pesticide in different foods, the legal battle in European Union and the fact that it has been banned in more and more countries, but cannot be completely avoided. At the same time, market analysts predict the market to expand in the next five years.

After this large and cross-border investigation that unveils its risks for the public. The use of the pesticide has been banned in the European Union since February 2020. Consequently, important companies remove this chemical from their productions due to it has been linked to low birth weight, reduced IQ and attention disorders in children. Recently US environmental agency also banned it for the same reasons. 

Read the full story here

Yellow card for Ghana from the European Commission and a Ghanaian minister replaced due to a journalistic investigation (2021)

The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development in Ghana, Mrs Elizabeth Afoley Quaye, lost her seat in the December 2020 polls and has been replaced as minister after a journalistic investigation. Also, the European Commission has issued a warning (so-called yellow card) to the Republic of Ghana that it risks being identified as a non-cooperating country in the fight against Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. The Commission's decision is based on various shortcomings in Ghana's ability to comply with its duties under international law as flag, port, coastal or market State. 

In 2020 a Journalismfund supported investigation by Gideon Sarpong and Elfredah Kevin-Alerechi revealed the negative impact of illegal industrial fishing on the marine ecosystem and biodiversity in Ghana and Nigeria and the significant economic toll on artisanal fishers. This cross-border story has already highlighted how current laws in both countries had been rendered ineffective through years of non-enforcement serving as a boost to illegal, unreported and unregulated IUU fishing. 

Currently Ghana is encouraged to take the necessary actions in order to abide by its international obligations in the fight against IUU fishing.  

Read the full story here

Nestlé recognises its responsibility and promises progress after Waterstories.eu's research (2021)

After a Liberation investigation into illegal dumping grounds of Nestlé Waters in Vittel, the mineral water giant is forced to act more transparently. In Vosges Matin its management admits their responsibility for nine illegal landfills and announces a draft action plan to remove its waste.

This investigation was conducted in France in the framework of the Waterstories.eu project with the support of Journalismfund's European Cross-Border Grants programme. It's a cross-border multimedia project about the European bottled water industry, initiated by We Report, a European network of investigative journalists. Eight members of the network from four different countries are working on concrete cases in France, Germany and Italy, where the most of Europe's bottled water is produced and consumed.

Nestlé's production manager, David Vivier, first admitted that nine landfills are in the territory. Five are open-air landfills for which "the solution would be quick to implement to clean them up". Four are buried sites, in They-sous-Montfort, Saint-Ouen-lès-Parey, Contrexéville and Crainvilliers, on which vegetation has grown back.

Read the full story here

Ministry of Transport in Lebanon issued a warning to ticket sales agents in Sweden (2021)

In May, 2021 the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport in Lebanon issued an official statement with a warning for agents in Sweden and Germany, who sell airline tickets to Syria via Beirut. The goal of these ticket sales offices is to defraud Swedish residents, the Ministry said.

It happened just after two weeks of Daraj publication in line with a Money Trail-supported cross-border investigation 'The way to Damascus'. Also, one of the biggest ticket sales agents located in Jönköping Elias Dawod (Sweden) arranging flights to Syria removed all the labels from the front of its building and closed its office.

Read the full story here

Bulgarian Opposition is asking an investigation into the Prime Minister (2020)

As a consequence of the story ‘Is Europe a dangerous place for Turkish dissidents?’ Bulgarian political party ‘Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB)’ has asked the prosecution to investigate the actions of the Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and former Chief Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov for crimes against the republic.

In September 2020 journalists Dimitar Ganev and Maximilian Popp published their research with secret dispatches revealing the role of the Bulgarian government in persecuting Turkish opposition figures. In this investigation they suggested that the Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov and former prosecutor general Sotir Tsatsarov had helped Turkey persecute several opponents of the regime in Ankara, violating international conventions and legal principles. After their publication at Der Spiegel magazine Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty’s Bulgarian Service also reported on the impact of the story. Read more at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (in Bulgarian) in general about the project here.

Read the full story here.

Funding China's energy at Europe's expense: European Commission wants investigation into Maltese-Montenegrin energy deal (2020)

The Malta-based Shift News in collaboration with the largest Montenegrin daily DAN launched an investigation into the Sino-Maltese wind farm project in Montenegro underhandedly backed by Montenegro's ruling clique and Azerbaijani businesses present both in Malta and Montenegro. In mid-July 2020 the European Commission has said it expects the Mozura wind farm deal in Montenegro to be reviewed by independent and professional institutions in an investigation that may carry implications for those in Malta involved in the project. It expected the Montenegrin authorities to answer to accusations of corruption related to the joint Maltese-Montenegrin wind power project.

Read the full story here.

European Parliament wants to know about the Commission's plans to create facial recognition databases (2020)

The “Facing the Future” project uncovered the state of facial recognition technology in Europe. MPs in the European Parliament have pressed the Commission for more details on their plans to create facial recognition databases.

At the end of February Euractiv reported on the impact of a Journalismfund-supported European cross-border investigation to uncover the state of facial recognition technology in Europe. MPs in the European Parliament have pressed the Commission for more details on their plans to create facial recognition databases.

The team of journalists from Germany, Spain and the UK unearth the stories behind the development and deployment of facial recognition technologies in the EU. Caitlin Chandler, Zachary Campbell and Chris Jones obtained leaked internal EU documents that reveal law enforcement is lobbying to create a network of national police facial recognition databases.

Read the full story here.

A Betting Nation: Kenyan Government back-pedalled on tax cut for betting companies (2020)

In July 2020 an investigation ‘A betting Nation’ got an immediate impact: the Kenyan government back-pedalled on a controversial tax cut less than 48 hours after the president had signed it into law.

The investigation series by journalists Lionel Faull (UK) and Paul Wafula (Kenya) was published in the Daily Nation, Kenya’s leading independent newspaper. The first leg revealed the true numbers of Kenya’s enormous betting addiction, based on leaked figures from the betting regulator. In a follow-up article, the journalists revealed that at the same time the Kenyan government removed a tax for betting companies, a cousin of Kenya’s president accumulated a financial stake in betting giant SportPesa. The final leg of the investigation revealed that SportPesa has been sucking profits out of its lucrative Kenyan business by paying millions of pounds to a software company it owns in the UK – an arrangement that has significantly reduced its tax bills.

Read more at the Daily Nation (Kenya’s leading independent newspaper), at Finance Uncovered and in general about all three legs of this investigation and its impact here. The investigation was supported by Journalismfund’s Money Trail Grants Programme.

Read the full story here.

Zimbabwean Government bans riverbed and alluvial mining (2020)

In their Mail & Guardian publication journalists Stephen Tsoroti and Ankita Anand investigated how an estimate of 50% of artisanal and small-scale mined gold in Zimbabwe was lost to smuggling, causing bloody turf wars that have claimed hundreds of lives.

This story had immediate impact. In September 2020 environment groups in Zimbabwe made presentations to the Zimbabwean Cabinet, also using the report from the above investigation. As a result, the Cabinet has ordered banning of riverbed and alluvial mining, and directed holders of mining titles to obtain environmental clearance.

Read the full story here.

The Chlorpyrifos Case: Manufacturer to Stop Producing Pesticide Linked to Brain Damage (2019-2020)

Residues of Chlorpyrifos, a dangerous insecticide, have been found in fruit baskets and samples of human urine across Europe. Chlorpyrifos is a chemical that kills insects on growing vegetables and fruit. The series of stories, funded by Journalismfund Europe, uncover its effect on adults and children, the spread of the pesticide in different foods, the legal battle in European Union and the fact that it has been banned in more and more countries, but cannot be completely avoided.

Following the publication of the story in different media organisations in Europe, EU experts and staff at the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) published an unprecedented statement on the controversial pesticides, saying the pesticides do not meet the criteria for renewed approval. The announcement was made on the 2nd of August 2019. The present approvals for the pesticide expire in January 2020.

In December 2020 the EU banned the insecticides chlorpyrifos and chlorpyrifos-methyl from the market. The two products were supposed to get their market approval renewed in January 2020, but an investigation supported by our European Cross-Border Grant programme decided otherwise. In total, this investigation produced more than original 16 stories in more than 6 countries.

A major manufacturer of the insecticide chlorpyrifos Corteva Inc will stop making the chemical at the end of 2020 Journalismfund-supported cross-border investigative team of journalists from Poland, Denmark and Slovenia made their own contribution into the story.

After this year, farmers will not be allowed to use this agricultural pesticide.

Read the full story here.

The Toxic Valley: Turkish MPs asked for an investigation (2018-2019)

Journalists investigated the environmental and medical consequences of chemical dumping and pollution that have led to a widespread health crisis in Kocaeli, Turkey’s most heavily industrialised region. After they published their stories in September and October, 22 MPs from Turkey’s main opposition party CHP submitted a written motion urging the Turkish Parliament to investigate “the toxicity of the dump and take necessary precautions urgently, as well as to determine how the dump consisting asbestos came about and who the responsible parties are”.

Turkish MPs asked for a commission to be set up to investigate the lethal dump “that damaged the Dilovasi town to the point of catastrophe”. The motion explicitly referred to the journalists’ reporting, including witness testimonies and lab testings of samples from the dump.

Read the full story here.

Mercy Killing: MP put the 'Mercy Killing' on the European agenda (2018)

Having a child with a disability poses severe challenges to parents, making their lives more difficult. For parents living in a very poor developing country it’s even more challenging. Mercy Killing is a documentary about parents in Uganda who kill their disabled children out of desperation. The parents of disabled children kill or allow them to die by starving them or denying them medical attention because of the belief that these children are better off dead than having to endure a painful and incurable disability.

The documentary was broadcast on Flemish News Channel, Canvas, where around 250 000 people watched on the first night.

After seeing the documentary, member of the European Parliament Hilde Vautmans was so overwhelmed that she put the problem on the European agenda.

On 15 March 2018, there was a EU- resolution on the matter.

In 2019 it was nominated for De Loeps investigative journalism prize (Belgium/The Netherlands). In the category 'Signalerend'.

Read the full story here.

Parlementary debates in Belgium, The Netherlands and Bulgaria about 'The Slavery of Care' (2018)

The story focuses on the plight of cash-strapped Bulgarian women who come to Belgium and the Netherlands as posted workers to care for elderly people who want to spend the last months or years of their life in their own home, instead of in a retirement home. The investigation focuses on one of the main players on the market offering such services, Seniorcare24.

The investigation revealed that the Bulgarian women employed by this group are being exploited.

There were different parliamentary debates in Belgium, the Netherlands and Bulgaria about the issue. Civil society organisations called on politicians to look into this issue in order to protect both senior citizens and foreign workers.

In March 2019, Slavery of Care was nominated for the 'Belfius-persprijs' in the category 'Television press'. The Belfius Press Awards is a series of annual press awards from the Belgian bank Belfius for the best articles or series of articles, audio-visual reports and photos that were published or distributed in the media during the past year.

Read the full story here.

The Ematum deal in Mozambique: Journalist contributed to questions asked in hig-profile parliamentary inquiry (2016-2017-2019)

In 2013, Mozambique borrowed $850 million ostensibly to fund the purchase of a tuna fishing fleet, through a publicly-privately owned special purpose company called Ematum. It soon emerged that much of the money was used to purchase military hardware – but it remains unclear how much. There are strong suspicions that some of the missing money might have been used to arm the military for a land offensive against opposition forces, which led to human rights abuses against the civilian population, and which appears to be being covered up.

  • The article published (in Portuguese) on 9 March 2016 in Mozambican newspaper Foreign Policy, were widely read and quoted by Mozambican news media, as well as cited in numerous blogs and shared on social media.
  • Tom Bowker, one of the journalists who worked on the story, contributed to questions which were asked in a high-profile parliamentary inquiry into the deals.
  • The reporting on Andrew Pearse (Ex-Credit Suisse Banker) will certainly have informed the Jubilee Debt campaign on Mozambique's debt.

Find the full story here.

 Fish-for-cash barter: How EU robs Africa of its seafood (2017)

The flowery legalese of any Fishing Partnership Agreement always appears to secure the sustainability of the domestic fisheries involved but really this economic document is Brussels’ strategy for plundering the abundant undersea resources of Africa’s maritime states. From Sao Tomé to Sierra Leone, evidence abounds that the EU merely pays lip service to its pledges for global development.

This investigation uncovered cases of corruption involving European companies which was well documented in the published work. The publications in different media outlets led to a subsequent follow up by a member of the European parliament who contacted the team for more details on the issue.

The team’s efforts have not gone unrecognised in media circles. In September of 2018, they were the winners of Hostwriter journalism prize that was funded by the Otto Sprenger Foundation in Warsaw, Poland.

Read the full story here.

The MEPS project: The ghost offices of MEPS (2017)

Journalismfund Europe financed some of the freelancers on this project. In total, 48 journalists were involved in all 28 Member states.

In an unprecedented EU-wide collaborative effort, the journalists from "The MEPs Project" located in every member state investigated how members of the European Parliament (MEPs) make use of the general expenses payments they receive every month.

- On 31 May 2017, Transparency International called for action: “This is what happens when MEPs can collectively spend €40 millions of taxpayers’ money every year without having to produce a single receipt”, said Nick Aiossa, Policy Officer at Transparency International EU.

“It should be obvious that the lack of transparency and control around these allowances make them vulnerable to abuse. Today’s revelations are ample proof of that. This allowance has rules in place and it is not meant to serve as an additional salary, a way to personally enrich themselves, nor subsidise domestic political parties. It is time for the Parliament to take action to instill high-levels of trust in the institution,” concluded Aiossa.

- Litigation: the group of journalists who worked on this story sued the MEPs in the EU Court of Justice. On the 25th of September 2018, the court ruled against the journalists who have since announced that they will appeal.

Find the full story here.

Illicit money flows to African political parties (2015-2016)

A 2016 grant supported an investigation that revealed how four of Africa’s most long-standing ruling political parties are being financed from illicit financial flows from large multi-national corporations. 

The investigation resulted in numerous articles being published in the mainstream media as well as in policy-oriented publications such as Harvard ‘s Human Rights Journal and the World Policy Journal. The authors of the investigation were asked to present their findings before the African Union’s Parliament and the Anti-Corruption Board and to the OECD. 

Read the full story here.

Miscarriage of justice through forensic language analysis (2015-2016)

Criminal justice systems throughout Europe and many other parts of the world increasingly use forensic speech science as evidence in courts. In 2015, a grant was awarded to a team of journalists and researchers that uncovered how the
use of this method led to severe miscarriages of justice. The investigation won
the 2016 European Science Writer of the Year Prize and team members have been invited to speak at several academic conferences on the topic. The team leader was invited to participate in the UK Parliament Office of Science and Technology’s briefing on forensic language analysis.

In 2016, the same team was awarded another grant for an investigation (the first of its kind) on a controversial linguistic test that is being used in nine European countries to identify the origin of asylum seekers. The investigation showed how the technique, Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin (LADO), led to miscarriages of justice and revealed that
it has been questioned by courts and immigration agencies in both the UK and Sweden. This issue is highly topical because the recent agreement between the European Union and Turkey on refugee management unfortunately includes the use of LADO.

Journalist Michele Catanzaro won the 2016 European Science Writer of the Year award for this project.

Read the two stories here:

Special Branch surveillance files made public (2016)

In 2015, the Fund supported the Special Branch Files Project which has become
a live archive of declassified files on the surveillance of political movements and individuals in the UK.This is a crucial project because the Metropolitan
 Police increasingly refuses requests to disclose Special Branch files despite the introduction in 2005 of the Freedom of Information Act in Britain.

The project has led to the development of an active community of contributors and users who are using the archive as a resource to defend victims of unfounded police surveillance and for court cases. The project has become an important example of how to overcome challenges of access to information.

Read the full story here.

Dieselgate 2.0
 (2016)

The 2016 investigation proved that Opel dealers in Belgium were using software that enhanced the performance of the Opel Zafira Tourer 2014 model but also increased its nitrogen oxide emission levels several hundred times higher than accepted norms. As a result of the investigation, Opel dealers are now changing the software package thereby making the cars less hazardous to the environment. These changes took place shortly after the Dieselgate scandal erupted in Europe. 
 

Read the full story here.

Double standards in pricing of life saving medicine (2016)

A 2016 investigation on the price of cancer medicines in five European countries revealed that drug manufacturers sometimes charge higher prices for drugs in poor Eastern countries than in the West. The published articles received wide exposure at both national and European levels and sparked heated debate about access to treatment among grassroots groups, cancer specialists and politicians. As a result, in Latvia, the government agreed to allocate extra funding for cancer detection and treatment.

The Bulgarian Society for Medical Oncology used the information for lobbying purposes. As a result, the government re-instated drugs they had taken off the market. In Switzerland patient groups lobbied members of Parliament and the government on unfair pricing practices of Swiss drug companies. One of the published articles received the German Association of Pharmacists’ Expopharm Media Prize and was nominated for the German Reporter Prize for Best Investigation.

Read the full story here.

Trafficking hopeful football youngsters to Europe
 (2014-2015)

In 2016, a Cross Continents grant was awarded to a team of journalists to investigate the trafficking of young boys from West Africa to Europe by fake football agents promising them trials with top football clubs. The investigative team used data journalism techniques to uncover money flows in the football industry and corruption in the world of football agents. The story won the CNN 2016 African Journalist Award for sports reporting and the team was noticed by The New York Times who wanted to carry out a follow-up investigation. This project won the AMI Journalism against Indifference Prize and the High Commission for Migration's Communication Award in 2016. 

Read the full story here.

Romanian children growing up without their parents 
(2012-2014)

In 2014, a grant (pre-research) was awarded to an Antwerp-based filmmaker for the production of her documentary film entitled Waiting for August. The film is about Georgiana, a 15-year-old teenager from Bacau, who had to raise her six siblings alone when her mother went to work in Belgium in order to support her family. This is a story which illustrates the situation of countless other Romanian children. The film received three international awards and was praised by audiences around the world. 

Read the full story here.

The Migrants Files: counting the dead and following the money (2013-2014)

In 2013, a team of seven journalists from across Europe set out to document how many migrants were actually dying on their way to Europe every year. Their findings proved to be significantly higher than what had been previously known and publicised. The initial findings were published in 12 countries, widely quoted in a variety of European media, and were used by the International Organisation of Migration. The project won the European Press Prize Innovation Award. The Migrant Files database is still regularly being updated and continues to serve as an important reference for researchers, journalists, and NGOs. 
 

In 2015 the project won the European Press Prize Innovation Award, the Global Editors Network Data Journalism Awards and the Gold Medal at 'Premios ÑH'.

Read the full story here.

Congo - The Epic History of a People (2008-2010)

Belgian journalist and author David Van Reybrouck received a grant to conduct research for his book documenting the history of Congo from the period before the arrival of the Welsh-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley to today’s Chinese influence. This is a good example of an exceptional journalistic project supported by Journalismfund Europe that departs from classic investigative journalism. The book has received 11 international prizes since its publication in 2010 and has been translated into six European languages.

Read the full story here.