EL CERREJÓN — The largest open pit coal mine in the world lies in Colombia. Health damage caused both to its workers and the communities – silicosis disease among them – is peremptory and alarming.

OXFORD – Fuelling academia: OpenDemocracy and Investigate Europe find that Europe’s leading universities have received at least €260 million from fossil fuel giants and taken advice on degree curricullae. 

BRUSSELS - Local authorities become slightly more transparent about municipal councils.

KEBILI - This projects looked into the significant social and environmental consequences Tunisia bears due to extractive industries of Serinus Energy.

BRUSSELS - Paradoxical plastics: Why are bioplastics not necessarily as good as a solution to plastic waste as the had been proclaimed?

BUCHAREST - Dozens of people definitively convicted in Romania live today in Italy.

SARAJEVO - Dozens of migrants from Asia and Africa drown every year in the rivers between Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. 

SOTK/KVESHI - This project exposes the pressing water challenges in the neighboring South Caucasian countries - post-war Armenia, and conflict-impacted Georgia.

BELGRADE - Serbia is a graveyard for old and polluting cars from Western Europe. Last year alone, countries in the European Union (EU) exported around 150,000 used cars to the Balkan country. Experts say that this number will increase in the coming years, as the EU is facing out cars using internal combustion engines by 2035 as part of the Green Deal.

ITALY - In 2015, in Indonesia, the Corruption Eradication Commission (Kpk) conducted an investigation into the purchase of an AW101 helicopter from AgustaWestland, now part of Leonardo Spa.

WINDHOEK - This investigation shows that Namibia will be soon becoming a major green hydrogen supplier to Europe, with about $37 million of the EU commission's funding — but the potential damage to biodiversity is high. Also the projects are being led by executives with a questionable track record.

CÁCERES – The Fuelling a Mega Fire report is intended to help build a new understanding of mega fires and the structural causes accommodating them.

BRUSSELS – A team of investigative journalists led by Voxeurop carried out a cross-border investigation into how the European automotive industry lobby managed to weaken the Euro 7 regulation on new motor vehicle emissions standards.

TACLOBAN - Almost a decade after typhoon Yolanda devastated parts of the Philippines in 2023, no less than Tacloban City’s own mayor has said that 70% of the houses given to Yolanda survivors by the government are “substandard.”

TYROL - As a result of climate change, droughts are on the rise in Europe and local and national governments are preparing for increasingly dry years. 

ALIAĞA – Asbestos, that is especially hard to track in ships, often causes lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis. The team investigated several shipbreaking yards, including Kılıçlar in Turkey, where workers are exposed to the deadly substance without adequate protection. 

GOZO – A year-long collaborative investigation by The Shift and environmental journalist Thomas Krumenacker has established a pattern of vote-buying politics favouring the Maltese hunting lobby and directly leading to the degradation of endangered and at-risk bird species hunted in Malta both legally and illegally.

BRUSSELS — Some EU members states are still allowed to apply high levels of nitrogen to grassland, despite the long-adopted EU’s Water Framework Directive. The investigation contrasts the status of surface water in Ireland, where it is the case, and Italy, and reveals the impact of intensive dairy agriculture on aquatic life.

EUROPE - Affordable housing is becoming scarce in European cities. 

ACCRA — Africa produces less than 4% of the greenhouse gases that are thought to lead to climate change, and yet continental Africa is expected to be the most affected by climate change.

OSLO - Every weekend, across, Europe, hundreds of thousands of footballers play local football for fun. 

SKOPJE / TIRANA - Forests and rivers of Albania and North Macedonia have been exploited for years. These two countries, located in the Western Balkans, have amazing ecosystems and biodiversity, with plenty of endemic tree species and rivers with abundance of water. But natural resources in the region are often seen as a very good source for making profit, mainly by businessmen with a strong political support.

KIRUNA - This investigation sheds light on what lies beneath the EU’s ‘green mining’ ambitions, and offers a unique perspective on the continent’s quest for critical raw materials, such as lithium, nickel, copper and rare earth elements needed for the future.

REYKJAVÍK – This investigation explored the controversy around PMSG, a hormone used for meat production: How it is produced, why and where it is used, ethical debates, and the complex legal battles around it.

EDO/OKOMU – The journalists revealed that rubber and palm oil craze is a reason behind land grabbing, deforestation, and human rights violations in both Ghana and Nigeria. The French company Socfin's presence in southern Nigeria has caused host communities pain and rights violations, even if they mask it with well-oiled communication.

VILJANDIMAA — The peat trade implies big profits. At the same time, extracting peat is carbon intensive and destroys biodiversity. This investigation looks at how this business is especially lucrative for the Netherlands that do not just trade but also mine peat in Latvia and Estonia.

VALLETTA — In Malta, residents of a historic town are fighting emissions from a neighbouring shipyard. At the center of their struggle is the world's largest shipping company. 'Particulate matters' investigation looks into this and proves that more asthma cases are diagnosed in the district where the shipyard is located. 

MALMÖ - In 1994, the world’s first oat milk company was born in Sweden. 

NEZAVERTAILOVCA — The investigation presents the environmental problems cause by the activity of the Cuciurgani thermal power plant (MGRES).

KYIV — This story studies the links between Ukraine's pace of reforms in the field of industrial pollution and the prospects of the country for integration into the European Union, notably within the highly promising energy market.

WARSAW - Dreams of growing megawatts like tomatoes on a windowsill. Will energy cooperatives give power to the people?

EUROPE/SUDAN - This series of investigative reports looks at a private security company belonging to the RSF shadow economy and at its clients – European and Western embassies, aid and developmental organizations.

TARANTO - "When you offer a farmer 10,000 euros for a piece of land, it is like a godsend."

MINSK - The investigation shows how Grodno Azot circumvents sanctions by passing off its products as Uzbek (Uzbek-made?), as well as by using new intermediary companies.

BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA/MONTENEGRO/SERBIA - How parents from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia deal with the daily challenges of separation after their children leave the country. 

ODEMIRA - Faced with poor water management, locals in Portugal, Greece and Romania struggle to keep their farmlands and financially survive, and often resort to extreme solutions to find usable water. Meanwhile local authorities allow big companies to use water irrigation methods that can pose a threat to the nearby communities, the natural habitat and the presence of water in the area as such.

MILAN - Asset management companies in Europe are using semantic tricks and regulatory loopholes to sell 'green' investments that actually fund the hydrocarbon industry. Italy's Eurizon, a subsidiary of Intesa SanPaolo, is a case in point. 

EUROPE - Elite European football has been overrun with advertisements for Asian betting brands in recent years, despite many of these companies being connected to major organised crime figures.

PRAGUE - The series of investigative reports deals with the story of the Czech-Polish conflict about the future of the Turów mine in the border region of both countries, put in a wider historical and social context.

LONDON/BERLIN/COPENHAGEN - In the not-so-distant past, the concept of offshore immigration policies, which involve shifting the responsibility of processing asylum claims to a different country, was largely associated with populist far-right ideologies.

DUBLIN/LONDON - The local authorities of Tower Hamlets in London and Drumcondra/Finglas in Dublin have been rolling out neighbourhood transport schemes to reduce car use and adapt their transport systems to favour greener modes of travel.

# Financial support
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# Projects supported
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# Grantees
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Grants 

Investigation Grants for Environmental Journalism

This grant programme supports cross-border teams of professional journalists and/or news outlets to conduct investigations into environmental affairs related to continental Europe.

The next application deadline is Thursday 18 January 2024 at 1 pm CET.

Pascal Decroos Fund

The Pascal Decroos Fund is Journalismfund Europe's oldest grant programme. Since 1999 it strives to advance investigative journalism in Dutch-language media in Belgium.

The next application deadline is Thursday 1 February 2024 at 1 pm CET.

FPD Low Countries

With this project, Journalismfund aims at addressing the shortage of local independent journalism by awarding grants to local investigative journalistic projects in Belgium and the Netherlands and stimulating cross-border collaboration.

The next application deadline is Thursday 1 February 2024 at 1 pm CET.

News

Scholarships for grantees

To enable investigative journalists to share their experience and knowledge with colleagues at conferences, trainings, webinars and other available journalistic events, Journalismfund Europe provides scholarships for its grantees.

25th Year Anniversary of Journalismfund Europe

Journalismfund is hiring

Journalismfund is hiring a Project Coordinator

2023-11-27

BRUSSELS - Journalismfund is hiring a Project Coordinator for its European Cross-border programme.

Freezing peat mining permits in Estonia

2023-11-27

TALLINN - Following an investigation on the environmental damage caused by the peat mining industry in the Baltics, the Estonian Ministry of Climate is considering to suspend the issuance of new peat mining permits and freeze the extension of old permits until the new climate law is enacted.

Council of Europe Congress calls for more support to prevent local media deserts

CoE calls for more support to prevent local media deserts

2023-10-30

STRASBOURG - Grassroots media play a key role in upholding local democracy, and authorities at all levels can and should take steps to strengthen grassroots media, finds a new report on local and regional media, presented by co-rapporteurs, Cecilia Dalman Eek (Sweden, SOC/G/PD) and Mélanie Lepoultier (France, ILDG) at the 45th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities on 25 October 2023.

Agenda

12Apr
Conference

The SKUP conference is the biggest event of the year for investigative journalism in Norway. You'll learn basic and advanced skills, you'll be inspired and you'll make new friends. It's fun too!

Tønsberg (Norway)
30May
2Jun
Conference

Dataharvest – The European Investigative Journalism Conference is a meeting point where networks are established and nurtured, data and documents shared, cross-border projects conceived and teams established. The conference days are all about learning, inspiration and getting some work done.

Mechelen (Belgium)