00:00No, these European leaders were not snapped together in their teens.
00:08According to social media users, a picture circulating online allegedly shows former German Chancellor Angela Merkel
00:15alongside former British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
00:20The text on the photo alleges that the three childhood friends grew up together before going on to govern separate countries.
00:26The post has garnered more than 725,000 views recently after being shared on X and regularly resurfaces online.
00:34The post states that one of the teenagers in the photo is von der Leyen,
00:38but the modern-day picture below actually shows former Lithuanian president Dalia Garibaus-Kaite.
00:43Although von der Leyen was a member of Mrs Merkel's cabinet, she has never led a contrary contrary to the text on the photograph.
00:49As for the picture itself, by conducting a reverse image search, Euroverify traced it to an article published by Time magazine in 2015.
00:57Featuring childhood pictures of Merkel, it was published after she was nominated as Time Person of the Year in 2015.
01:03The caption states that Angela Kasner is featured on the left of the picture at a 1972 New Year's Eve party in Berlin.
01:10Kasner is Angela Merkel's maiden name.
01:12Although Euroverify was unable to identify who the other girls in the picture are,
01:16the European Commission has previously confirmed to the media that von der Leyen does not feature in the picture.
01:21Meanwhile, Lithuanian officials told Euroverify that Garibaus-Kaite is not in the picture either.
01:27Additionally, childhood pictures of Theresa May do not resemble either of the other two teenage girls in the photograph.
01:33So yes, this is a picture of the former German Chancellor as a teenager,
01:37but the other two world leaders mentioned in the text cannot be seen in it.
01:40These kind of false online claims are regularly spread by accounts that share conspiracy theories,
01:46posing the risk of discrediting European institutions and their member states' governments with unfounded allegations.
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