A Facebook post falsely claims that the leaders of EU member states have no offspring. A Truthmeter fact-check, however, proved that most of the prime ministers and presidents of EU Member-States have children, including the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen who has seven children. The post, in fact, demonizes Western values that favor personal freedom and choice that imply the right to choose whether to be a parent or not, writes Truthmeter.mk.
Under the content-sharing agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text below:
We are fact-checking a post on the social network Facebook (screenshot here) that claims:
Most European leaders do not have children and, therefore have 0 investment in the future of their countries.
Following such entities, who are mere servants of a sick deranged godless elite with a mentally sick projection of a barren world is self-destruction.
The European Union has 27 Member-States which can be seen on the following link, those being: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
Contrary to the post we are fact-checking, which claims that the European leaders are childless, “Truthmeter” researched the CVs of the current prime ministers and presidents of each of these countries separately and determined that most of them have children, including the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who has seven children.
The Austrian Chancellor (Prime Minister), Karl Nehammer has two children. The President of Austria, Alexander Van der Bellen has two sons.
The Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander de Croo has two children, while King Phillipe of the Belgians has four.
The Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Nikolay Denkov has one child, while the President of Bulgaria, Rumen Radev has two.
The Prime Minister of Croatia, Andrej Plenković has three children, while Croatian President Zoran Milanović has two sons.
The President of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides has 4 children.
The Czech Prime Minister, Petr Fiala has 3 children, the same as the President of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel.
The Danish Prime Minister has two children, who support her political career.
Alar Karis, the President of Estonia has 3 children and 5 grandchildren. The Prime Minister of this EU мember state, Kaja Kallas has three children.
The Finnish Prime Minister, Petteri Orpo has 2 children, while the President has three.
The Prime Minister of France, Élisabeth Borne also has a child, while the French President, Emmanuel Macron does not have biological children.
The President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier has a daughter, Merit Steinmeier.
The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz has been married for a long time and has no children.
The President of Greece, Katerina Sakellaropoulou has one child, while the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis has three children.
Viktor Orbán has 5 children and he is the Prime Minister of Hungary. The President of Hungary, Katalin Novák has 3 children.
The Prime Minister of Ireland has no children, while the Irish President has 4 children.
The Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni has one child, while the President of Italy has 3 children.
The Latvian Prime Minister has 3 children, while the Latvian President has no children.
The President of Lithuania has 2 children, while the Prime Minister of Lithuania, Ingrida Šimonytė has no children.
The Prime Minister of Luxembourg has no children.
The Prime Minister of Malta has a daughter, while the President of Malta has 3 children.
The Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte has no children.
The President of Poland has one child, but the Polish Prime Minister has 4 children.
The Prime Minister of Portugal, António Costa has two children, while the Portuguese President has two children.
The Prime Minister of Romania has one child, and the President of Romania has no children.
The Slovak Prime Minister, Robert Fico has a son, while the President of the State, Zuzana Čaputová has 2 daughters.
Robert Golob, the Prime Minister of Slovenia has 3 children, while the President of Slovenia has a son.
The Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez has 2 children, while the Swedish Prime Minister has 3 children.
The post shared on Facebook is presented in the context of a propagandist portrayal of the West and the EU as a godless entity. The narratives of disinformation based on values are usually focused on endangered concepts such as “tradition”, “decency”, or terms that have positive connotations but are rarely clearly defined.
The Western concept of values favors individual rights of personal integrity, security, and freedom of expression and it respects and enables individual religious rights of citizens, i.e., the right to practice a religion. Enabling individual rights and freedoms in Western countries in propaganda narratives is the same as godlessness, especially in the context of the individual rights of the LGBT community. In every EU member state citizens have the freedom to exercise religion, to bear or not to bear children etc.
Due to all of the above-noted facts, the post fact-checked is assessed as untrue. Most of the European leaders – prime ministers and presidents of states – have children. Regardless of their choice to have or not to have children, that does not make them servants to “ungodly elites” who advocate self-destruction. The second part of the post has the purpose of demonizing and spreading propaganda against Western values that favor personal freedom and choice, including the right to choose to be a parent or not to have such a desire.
