Dataharvest 2025 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

Far-right and other extremist networks in Europe organise themselves and coordinate their activities across borders by using different technological and strategic means, and pursuing different social and political goals. In this session, three journalists will explain the diverse methodologies they employed to investigate how powerful hardliner networks operate in Europe.

Brecht Castel and Gaëtan Gras will describe how he and his colleagues used OSINT techniques to uncover how Active Clubs – which mix fitness and martial arts with far-right ideology – recruit and radicalise their members online. And Gabriela Keller will explain how they and her colleagues investigated how the international religious right has built cross-border alliances with civil society and political actors, with the aim of influencing policy and restrict women's reproductive rights.

By attending this session, you will learn different approaches to think of and plan a collaborative investigation into the activities of extremist networks.

The new European Commission's focus for the next five years will be on boosting industry's "competitiveness". This entails a radical deregulation agenda for rules that industry perceives as burdensome. Von der Leyen's deregulation agenda was heavily inspired by corporate lobbying campaigns. Last year, the chemical industry led on the Antwerp Declaration, a wish list of industry to slash regulations. This is now followed by the 'Clean Industrial Deal' which is pushing fossil gas for hydrogen, and ignores the other planetary crisis: pollution and biodiversity decline. CEO has compiled an initial list of more than 15 different tools for systemic deregulation. These create more hurdles for new progressive EU regulation, and create escape routes allowing companies to avoid regulation, as well as new hurdles for national level regulation. A good example are the Omnibus proposals, the first of which diluted sustainability reporting rules that had only recently been agreed. We'll share our insights on these new developments in the deregulation agenda, assess what's at stake, and how to build stories around them, at the European level and in your country.

How do you track down a hidden asset or find someone who doesn't want to be found, starting with almost no information? This session walks through real examples where investigative journalists needed support tackling these kinds of challenges. Rather than focusing on one specific method, we'll look at how researchers approach complex problems creatively when information is limited and subjects are trying to stay hidden. The goal is to share practical ways of thinking through obstacles and to inspire new ideas for your own investigations.

We all know that oligarchs, gangsters and shady politicians use shell companies and trusts in offshore jurisdictions to hide their ill-gotten gains. Just because they hide their cash doesn't mean we can't find their companies! This session will show you the tools available to help you crack open those nests of shell companies.
Come join us on this wild ride through an offshore maze

Privacy rights under GDPR are often seen as an obstacle to investigative journalism. In this session we focus on the great opportunity to access information which GDPR gives us.
While national laws on the right to access information are for everyone, GDPR is about individual control over information. When you learn to make use of this regulation, you can access information from big tech companies, from consumer clubs, and even religious sects.

Satellite data has become a powerful resource in investigative journalism — but using it effectively comes with technical, ethical, and practical challenges. This session draws on several recent investigations to highlight how journalists are incorporating satellite imagery and geospatial data into their reporting.

We’ll explore how radar-based analysis was used to document destruction in Ukrainian cities, and how satellite-derived location data revealed movement patterns of German intelligence service employees. These examples show not just what’s possible, but also what can go wrong — and how journalists adapted when it did. From sourcing the data to picking the right tools and interpreting results responsibly, the session offers real-world insights into the craft of satellite-aided investigations.

No technical background is required. This isn’t a hands-on workshop, but a behind-the-scenes look at how satellite data fits into newsroom workflows.

The arms industry is one of the most opaque sectors in Europe — and one of the least scrutinised. This session will offer a detailed look into the recent history and evolving strategies of the arms industry’s lobbying efforts, both at the EU institutions and bodies, and at national governments that control export licenses.

The session will explore how the industry has adapted and expanded its influence in recent years, especially in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the return of Donald Trump to the US presidency and his open scepticism of NATO.

Attendees will learn:

• Who the key arms industry players and lobbyists are, and how they operate at the EU level.
• The strategies used by the arms lobby to influence European institutions, defence policies, funding programmes.
• What legislative files and funding mechanisms they are currently targeting and why.
• Who the most relevant policy-makers in this field are.
• How journalists can track lobbying events, funding decisions, and defence deals that often remain under the radar.
• What stories are being missed and where journalists should be looking next.

The speakers will assume that attendees have at least some basic knowledge of the EU functioning and decision making-process, and of the recent ReArm Europe plan and EU White Paper for defence.
A booklet on EU militarisation main steps until 2021 is also available in German, English, French, Italian and Spanish (ENAAT and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung)

Court records can be a true treasure trove, containing vital nuggets that can jumpstart your investigation or judgements primed for reporting. It can be tough enough to access court documents in our home countries, but how do you find records abroad, sometimes in secretive jurisdictions? This session will show you how to find legal judgements from arbitration courts to property disputes in places like Russia, UAE and the UK. We will show you how to access them (VPN may be needed), how we found stories in them,  and will get you started on your quest for legal leads.

Many journalists get lost trying to find information and data quickly in the institutional labyrinth that is the European Union. Finding specific amendments, understanding the issues surrounding a piece of legislation, establishing the position of specific member states in negotiations or the approach of the European Commission... so much information is unknown or inaccessible to the layperson - who will easily become discouraged from pursuing their EU investigation.

In this session, we will will use concrete and practical examples to show you how to navigate the institutional triangle (Commission, EU Parliament and the Council), as well as the Court of Justice of the European Union. We'll explain how to track the European legislative process, quickly find the relevant players, information and data you need. This won't be an ex-cathedra lecture, but a practical deep dive session, with, as a take away, a list of useful links organised according to journalistic needs. After the session, you are also welcome to join us in the EU Cafe corner for a further discussion or get your specific EU questions answered.

Whistleblowers can be vital sources for journalists, and their information has initiated some of the biggest investigations. But whistleblowers are running big risks – from personal safety to legal threats. What do you do as a journalist if you are approached by a whistleblower? How do you get and verify the information you need while still keeping your source secret and safe? And what protection exists for these people who shed light on conditions that were meant to be kept hidden? Join this conversation between a journalist with long experience of working with whistleblowers and secret sources and a specialist in the protection and legislation around whistleblowing.

This session will teach journalists how to filter procurement data, map companies dealing with invasive surveillance equipment, and identify highly indicative tenders for spy tech.

In this session, you’ll learn key principles of how invasive surveillance technologies are procured and operated, which will help you boost your research by using the right keywords, official terminology, and industry slangl, and help you uncover specialized surveillance tools hidden in plain sight. You will also learn about other resources and tools that can help you find information on the surveillance industry, and how to turn these leads into an investigative story on state surveillance.

In the session, we'll discuss how to use tools like web scraping, AI-powered data analysis, and semantic search techniques that can significantly speed up your investigation process, but no knowledge of data analysis or programming is needed to attend the session.

In this session, we will share tips on tracking lobbyists and understanding how the PR campaigns and people behind them influence public policy. We will look into the available databases, registries and other methods that allow us to track lobbyists, their networks, topics they work on and their influence and the EU level and beyond. Lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory will introduce you to the Brussels lobby scene and show you how available lobby data can help you to nail your stories. Rachel Sherrington from De Smog will talk how to investigate corporate influence through the PR industry. It's an industry which is loosely regulated and yet influences the wider public conversation, ensuring some topics are kept off the agenda, while affecting other policies and their implementation.

Private finance data aggregators are a powerful - if often expensive - tool for understanding the investment and ownership structures of the funds or companies that are the subject of your investigation. With the right approach, they can also help generate stories by identifying suspicious or controversial flows of money. This sessions shows you how. We will share a case study from a recent series that revealed supposedly ethical public pension funds held investments in controversial businesses  - including tankers for Russian fossil fuels and crypto, all via opaque private equity intermediaries.

The arms business is booming. Between 2014 and 2023, EU countries have increased their defence spending by more than half, reaching €632 billion annually; the defence budget is set to explode in 2025. With defence budgets surging globally, how can journalists effectively investigate the defence industry? In recent years, two reporters from Investigate Europe have uncovered hidden aspects of the German Rheinmetall Group's operations, including its covert trade in ammunition factories. This workshop will share IE's insights and techniques, demonstrating how to investigate companies, employees, and trade flows in the defence sector. Participants will gain practical knowledge of investigative tools and strategies to uncover concealed practices which drive the arms industry's expansion.

It started with a list. Rumour has it the German embassy in Brussels holds the names of Nazi-perpetrators who still receive pensions from the Federal Republic.

Short answer: There is no list. Long answer: Over decades, Germany paid compensations to former SS volunteers across Europe for having fought in the Waffen SS. In some cases, the (admittedly very old) perpetrators, or their families, still receive money to this day. This still costs the State around five million euros a year.

But: This is nothing Germany wants to publicise or talk about. There are no statistics. Little to no money is directed towards resolving the injustice. And when neighbouring countries ask for information, Germany refuses.

Together with FragdenStaat, we spent months investigating how many pensions Germany paid and still pays to SS-volunteers. We sent numerous FOI requests across Bundesländer and countries, navigated a maze of German public bodies, carried out research in Germany, Sweden and Belgium, dived into old archives and searched for war volunteer associations.

This session will explain how we proceeded in this investigation and how we managed to find the last living SS-volunteer in Sweden. You will learn about the joy and pain of FOI requests, the challenges of working across borders and media, why local historians can be a brilliant source and how Translation tools can save your back. You will also learn how to build a story from FOI requests and manage to come from a: “I have lots of data and info” to to b: “I need to tell an engaging story that people actually want to read.”

Bluetooth trackers can help you develop interesting investigations. This team started using trackers while following two cars from Germany to Siberia, then a parcel from Prague to Moscow. In late 2024, they tracked more than 230 letters sent within Germany, using up to 80 trackers simultaneously. For almost 18 months they tracked 24 items of electronic waste from Germany to places as far afield as Pakistan.

In this session, the team will share the learnings and the technology behind all these projects and the scraping tools and software behind them. They will also bring some trackers and covers to inspire colleagues to use these devices, and share lessons learnt from ongoing collaborations in various countries where other journalists and newsrooms licensed them to help them move their projects forward.

Russian authorities continue to conceal the scale of their military losses in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. IStories found a way to reveal it: with the help of AI, they made an algorithm which helps to count it, combine in the database and update it regularly.
The algorithm is trained to collect all the public messages about Russian soldiers killed or missing in the war in Ukraine and extract all the important info from the post: region, date of birth and death, place of death and other info. Is it possible to make this process less painful and long? Come and hear some of the problems the team had to tackle:

• At first, AI thought that actor Alan Rickman had died in the war in Ukraine. How to define the actual war casualties?
• We detected more than 105K Russian soldiers died or missing on the war in Ukraine. The data of this scale can easily be corrupted. How to detect fakes among all of these messages?
• Time, resources, people: How to manage this kind of projects?
• How this experience can be useful for others, who want to reveal something hidden in the depth of social media or other data.

The team will share the database with the session participants and demonstrate how to use it.