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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Politics & government fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about politics & government. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

12,749 published reviews in this topic

dpaPolitics & government

Die Bundesrepublik ist kein souveräner Staat mit Beamten, die hoheitliche Aufgaben wahrnehmen.

Publisher’s rating: Nichts in dem Video beweist, dass die Bundesrepublik Deutschland kein Staat ist und ihre Beamten keine hoheitlichen Aufgaben erfüllen. Es handelt sich dabei um eine Ideologie. Im Video erwähnte Gesetzesnovellen, Verwaltungsreformen oder Urteile werden fehlinterpretiert.

The claim is that Germany is not a sovereign state and that its civil servants do not exercise governmental authority. The dpa review examined a social-media video that presented assorted legal and administrative details as proof of that assertion. It says the video’s examples included claims about state governments being companies, the federal eagle, election law, the law on regulatory offences, forestry offices and so-called SHAEF laws. The review describes the examples as either false or based on misinterpretations of the cited material. Several examples illustrate the review’s reasoning. The states’ entries in an Austrian business-information database, it reports, were creditworthiness information—not commercial-register entries showing that the states were private firms. The federal eagle is identified as one of the federal government’s official symbols. And although a court invalidated parts of the then-current federal election law in 2012, the review says that ruling did not invalidate earlier elections; it also notes that a replacement law was passed in 2020. The review also distinguishes changes in administration from the end of government authority: some states reorganized forestry offices, while others retained them. It says the supposed SHAEF laws refer to occupation-era rules, which had been incorporated into or repealed by German law, and notes that Germany became fully sovereign under the Two Plus Four Treaty, which entered into force in March 1991. Taken together, the review finds that the video’s cited details do not establish that Germany lacks sovereignty or that its civil servants lack sovereign functions.

dpaPolitics & government

Ukraine is not a state and is not recognized by the United Nations.

Publisher’s rating: L’Ukraine est un État et membre des Nations Unies. Il n’existe pas de preuve que Ban Ki-moon ait, un jour, tenu ces propos.

The review examines a Facebook post claiming Ukraine does not legally exist as a state because its borders were never declared to the United Nations. The post also attributes to former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon the assertion that Ukraine was “a Russian administrative district.” The review treats the alleged quotation and the claim about Ukraine’s statehood as connected, but checks them separately. On statehood and UN recognition, the review says Ukraine was a UN founding member on 24 October 1945 and remained a member while part of the Soviet Union. It notes that Ukraine announced on 24 August 1991 that it had dropped its former official name, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, in favor of “Ukraine”; it was not readmitted to the UN after the Soviet Union’s collapse. The review also explains that its examination of UN guidance on the emergence of states found no rule requiring countries to register their borders with the organization. The review points to a Russia–Ukraine border treaty signed by both countries and in force since 20 April 2004, accompanied by detailed maps. To investigate the Ban Ki-moon attribution, it reports finding no other source for the purported interview, and quotes UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric as saying he did not remember such an interview. It further contrasts the alleged remarks with Ban’s publicly documented support in March 2014 for Ukraine’s unity and sovereignty, and with a UN General Assembly resolution affirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders.