title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: Kościuszko did not believe that Napoleon would restore Poland in any durable form. When Napoleon's forces approached the borders of Poland, Kościuszko wrote him a letter, demanding guarantees of parliamentary democracy and substantial national borders, which Napoleon ignored. Kościuszko concluded that Napoleon had created the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 only as an expedient, not because he supported Polish sovereignty. Consequently, Kościuszko did not move to the Duchy of Warsaw or join the new Army of the Duchy, allied with Napoleon.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: After the fall of Napoleon, he met with Russia's Tsar Alexander I, in Paris and then in Braunau, Switzerland. The Tsar hoped that Kościuszko could be convinced to return to Poland, where the Tsar planned to create a new, Russian-allied Polish state (the Congress Kingdom). In return for his prospective services, Kościuszko demanded social reforms and restoration of territory, which he wished would reach the Dvina and Dnieper Rivers in the east. However, soon afterwards, in Vienna, Kościuszko learned that the Kingdom of Poland to be created by the Tsar would be even smaller than the earlier Duchy of Warsaw. Kościuszko called such an entity "a joke".


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: On 2 April 1817, Kościuszko emancipated the peasants in his remaining lands in Poland, but Tsar Alexander disallowed this. Suffering from poor health and old wounds, Kościuszko died in Solothurn at age 71 after falling from a horse, developing a fever, and suffering a stroke a few days later on 15 October 1817.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: Kościuszko's first funeral was held on 19 October 1817, at a formerly Jesuit church in Solothurn. As news of his death spread, masses and memorial services were held in partitioned Poland. His embalmed body was deposited in a crypt of the Solothurn church. In 1818, Kościuszko's body was transferred to Kraków, arriving at St. Florian's Church on 11 April 1818. On 22 June 1818, or 23 June 1819 (accounts vary), to the tolling of the Sigismund Bell and the firing of cannon, it was placed in a crypt at Wawel Cathedral, a pantheon of Polish kings and national heroes.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: Kościuszko's internal organs, which had been removed during embalming, were separately interred in a graveyard at Zuchwil, near Solothurn. Kościuszko's organs remain there to this day; a large memorial stone was erected in 1820, next to a Polish memorial chapel. However, his heart was not interred with the other organs but instead kept in an urn at the Polish Museum in Rapperswil, Switzerland. The heart, along with the rest of the Museum's holdings, were repatriated back to Warsaw in 1927, where the heart now reposes in a chapel at the Royal Castle.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: He has been proclaimed and claimed as a National Hero of Poland, the United States of America, Belarus, and Lithuania.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: The Polish historian Stanisław Herbst states in the 1967 "Polish Biographical Dictionary" that Kościuszko may be Poland's and the world's most popular Pole ever. There are monuments to him around the world, beginning with the Kościuszko Mound at Kraków, erected in 1820–23 by men, women, and children bringing earth from the battlefields where he had fought. The Thaddeus Kosciusko Bridge, a twin bridge structure across the Mohawk River in Albany, New York, completed in 1959, and the Kosciuszko Bridge, built in 1939 in New York City, were named in Kościuszko's honor. The New York City bridge was partially replaced in April 2017 by a new bridge of the same name, with an additional bridge that opened in August 2019. A commemorative plaque dedicated to Tadeusz Kosciuszko was placed on the newly built bridge in October 2022 by the Polish foundation "Będziem Polakami" (We will be Poles) together with the Dobra Polska Szkoła Foundation from New York with financial support from the Polish government.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: Kościuszko's 1796 Philadelphia residence is now the Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial, America's smallest national park or unit of the National Park System. There is a Kościuszko Museum at his last residence, in Solothurn, Switzerland. A Polish-American cultural agency, the Kosciuszko Foundation, headquartered in New York City, was created in 1925.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: A series of Polish Air Force units have borne the name "Kościuszko Squadron". During World War II a Polish Navy ship bore his name, as did the Polish 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: One of the first examples of a historical novel, "Thaddeus of Warsaw", was written in Kościuszko's honor by the Scottish author Jane Porter; it proved very popular, particularly in the United States, and went through over eighty editions in the 19th century. An opera, "Kościuszko nad Sekwaną" (Kościuszko at the Seine), written in the early 1820s, featured music by Franciszek Salezy Dutkiewicz and libretto by Konstanty Majeranowski. Later works have included dramas by Apollo Korzeniowski, Justyn Hoszowski and Władysław Ludwik Anczyc; three novels by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, one by Walery Przyborowski, one by Władysław Stanisław Reymont; and works by Maria Konopnicka. Kościuszko also appears in non-Polish literature, including a sonnet by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another by James Henry Leigh Hunt, poems by John Keats and Walter Savage Landor, and a work by Karl Eduard von Holtei.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: In 1933, the U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative stamp depicting an engraving of "Brigadier General Thaddeus Kosciuszko," a statue of Kościuszko that stands in Washington, D.C.'s Lafayette Square, near the White House. The stamp was issued on the 150th anniversary of Kościuszko's naturalization as an American citizen. Poland has also issued several stamps in his honor. In 2010, a copy of the monument was unveiled in Warsaw, Poland.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: There are statues of Kościuszko in Poland at Kraków (by Leonard Marconi), which was destroyed by German forces during the World War II occupation and was later replaced with a replica by Germany in 1960 and Łódź (by Mieczysław Lubelski); in the United States at Boston, West Point, Philadelphia (by Marian Konieczny), Detroit (a copy of Leonard Marconi's Kraków statue), Washington, D.C., Chicago, Milwaukee and Cleveland; and in Switzerland at Solothurn. Kościuszko has been the subject of paintings by Richard Cosway, Franciszek Smuglewicz, Michał Stachowicz, Juliusz Kossak and Jan Matejko. A monumental "Racławice Panorama" was painted by Jan Styka and Wojciech Kossak for the centenary of the 1794 Battle of Racławice. A commemorative monument was built in Minsk, Belarus in 2005.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: Geographic features that bear his name include Mount Kosciuszko, the tallest mountain in Australia, excluding external territories. This is in a New South Wales national park also named after him, Kosciuszko National Park. Other geographic entities named after Kościuszko include Kosciusko Island in Alaska, Kosciusko County in Indiana, and numerous cities, towns, streets and parks, particularly in the United States.


title: Tadeusz Kościuszko

text: Kościuszko has been the subject of many written works. The first biography of him was published in 1820 by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, who served beside Kościuszko as his aide-de-camp and was also imprisoned in Russia after the uprising. English-language biographies have included Monica Mary Gardner's "Kościuszko: A Biography", which was first published in 1920, and a 2009 work by Alex Storozynski titled "The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution".


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: Cassini–Huygens ( ), commonly called Cassini, was a space-research mission by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's "Cassini" space probe and ESA's "Huygens" lander, which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. "Cassini" was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit, where it stayed from 2004 to 2017. The two craft took their names from the astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: Launched aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur on October 15, 1997, "Cassini" was active in space for nearly 20 years, with 13 years spent orbiting Saturn and studying the planet and its system after entering orbit on July 1, 2004. The voyage to Saturn included flybys of Venus (April 1998 and July 1999), Earth (August 1999), the asteroid 2685 Masursky, and Jupiter (December 2000). The mission ended on September 15, 2017, when "Cassini's" trajectory took it into Saturn's upper atmosphere and it burned up in order to prevent any risk of contaminating Saturn's moons, which might have offered habitable environments to stowaway terrestrial microbes on the spacecraft. The mission was successful beyond expectations – NASA's Planetary Science Division Director, Jim Green, described "Cassini-Huygens" as a "mission of firsts" that has revolutionized human understanding of the Saturn system, including its moons and rings, and our understanding of where life might be found in the Solar System.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini"s planners originally scheduled a mission of four years, from June 2004 to May 2008. The mission was extended for another two years until September 2010, branded the "Cassini Equinox Mission". The mission was extended a second and final time with the "Cassini Solstice Mission", lasting another seven years until September 15, 2017, on which date "Cassini" was de-orbited to burn up in Saturn's upper atmosphere.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The "Huygens" module traveled with "Cassini" until its separation from the probe on December 25, 2004; Huygens landed by parachute on Titan on January 14, 2005. The separation was facilitated by the SED (Spin/Eject device), which provided a relative separation speed of 0.35 m/s and a spin rate of 7.5 rpm. It returned data to Earth for around 90 minutes, using the orbiter as a relay. This was the first landing ever accomplished in the outer Solar System and the first landing on a moon other than Earth's Moon.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: At the end of its mission, the "Cassini" spacecraft executed its "Grand Finale": a number of risky passes through the gaps between Saturn and its inner rings.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: This phase aimed to maximize "Cassini" scientific outcome before the spacecraft was intentionally destroyed to prevent potential contamination of Saturn's moons if "Cassini" were to unintentionally crash into them when maneuvering the probe was no longer possible due to power loss or other communication issues at the end of its operational lifespan. The atmospheric entry of "Cassini" ended the mission, but analysis of the returned data will continue for many years.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: Scientists and individuals from 27 countries made up the joint team responsible for designing, building, flying and collecting data from the "Cassini" orbiter and the "Huygens" probe.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the United States, where the orbiter was assembled, managed the mission. The European Space Research and Technology Centre developed "Huygens". The centre's prime contractor, Aérospatiale of France (part of Thales Alenia Space from 2005), assembled the probe with equipment and instruments supplied by many European countries (including "Huygens" batteries and two scientific instruments from the United States). The Italian Space Agency (ASI) provided the "Cassini" orbiter's high-gain radio antenna, with the incorporation of a low-gain antenna (to ensure telecommunications with the Earth for the entire duration of the mission), a compact and lightweight radar, which also used the high-gain antenna and served as a synthetic-aperture radar, a radar altimeter, a radiometer, the radio science subsystem (RSS), and the visible-channel portion VIMS-V of VIMS spectrometer.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: NASA provided the VIMS infrared counterpart, as well as the Main Electronic Assembly, which included electronic sub-assemblies provided by CNES of France.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On April 16, 2008, NASA announced a two-year extension of the funding for ground operations of this mission, at which point it was renamed the Cassini Equinox Mission.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The mission consisted of two main elements: the ASI/NASA "Cassini" orbiter, named for the Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, discoverer of Saturn's ring divisions and four of its satellites; and the ESA-developed "Huygens" probe, named for the Dutch astronomer, mathematician and physicist Christiaan Huygens, discoverer of Titan.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The mission was commonly called Saturn Orbiter Titan Probe (SOTP) during gestation, both as a Mariner Mark II mission and generically.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini-Huygens" was a Flagship-class mission to the outer planets. The other planetary flagships include "Galileo", Voyager, and Viking.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini–Huygens" was launched on October 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40 using a U.S. Air Force Titan IVB/Centaur rocket. The complete launcher was made up of a two-stage Titan IV booster rocket, two strap-on solid rocket engines, the Centaur upper stage, and a payload enclosure, or fairing.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The total cost of this scientific exploration mission was about US$3.26 billion, including $1.4 billion for pre-launch development, $704 million for mission operations, $54 million for tracking and $422 million for the launch vehicle. The United States contributed $2.6 billion (80%), the ESA $500 million (15%), and the ASI $160 million (5%). However, these figures are from the press kit which was prepared in October 2000. They do not include inflation over the course of a very long mission, nor do they include the cost of the extended missions.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The primary mission for "Cassini" was completed on July 30, 2008. The mission was extended to June 2010 ("Cassini" Equinox Mission). This studied the Saturn system in detail during the planet's equinox, which happened in August 2009.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On February 3, 2010, NASA announced another extension for "Cassini", lasting 6 years until 2017, ending at the time of summer solstice in Saturn's northern hemisphere ("Cassini" Solstice Mission). The extension enabled another 155 revolutions around the planet, 54 flybys of Titan and 11 flybys of Enceladus.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In 2017, an encounter with Titan changed its orbit in such a way that, at closest approach to Saturn, it was only above the planet's cloudtops, below the inner edge of the D ring. This sequence of "proximal orbits" ended when its final encounter with Titan sent the probe into Saturn's atmosphere to be destroyed.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini–Huygens"s origins date to 1982, when the European Science Foundation and the American National Academy of Sciences formed a working group to investigate future cooperative missions. Two European scientists suggested a paired Saturn Orbiter and Titan Probe as a possible joint mission. In 1983, NASA's Solar System Exploration Committee recommended the same Orbiter and Probe pair as a core NASA project. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) performed a joint study of the potential mission from 1984 to 1985. ESA continued with its own study in 1986, while the American astronaut Sally Ride, in her influential 1987 report "NASA Leadership and America's Future in Space", also examined and approved of the "Cassini" mission.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: While Ride's report described the Saturn orbiter and probe as a NASA solo mission, in 1988 the Associate Administrator for Space Science and Applications of NASA, Len Fisk, returned to the idea of a joint NASA and ESA mission. He wrote to his counterpart at ESA, Roger Bonnet, strongly suggesting that ESA choose the "Cassini" mission from the three candidates at hand and promising that NASA would commit to the mission as soon as ESA did.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: At the time, NASA was becoming more sensitive to the strain that had developed between the American and European space programs as a result of European perceptions that NASA had not treated it like an equal during previous collaborations. NASA officials and advisers involved in promoting and planning "Cassini–Huygens" attempted to correct this trend by stressing their desire to evenly share any scientific and technology benefits resulting from the mission. In part, this newfound spirit of cooperation with Europe was driven by a sense of competition with the Soviet Union, which had begun to cooperate more closely with Europe as ESA drew further away from NASA. Late in 1988, ESA chose Cassini–Huygens as its next major mission and the following year the program received major funding in the US.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The collaboration not only improved relations between the two space programs but also helped "Cassini–Huygens" survive congressional budget cuts in the United States. "Cassini–Huygens" came under fire politically in both 1992 and 1994, but NASA successfully persuaded the United States Congress that it would be unwise to halt the project after ESA had already poured funds into development because frustration on broken space exploration promises might spill over into other areas of foreign relations. The project proceeded politically smoothly after 1994, although citizens' groups concerned about its potential environmental impact attempted to derail it through protests and lawsuits until and past its 1997 launch.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The spacecraft was planned to be the second three-axis stabilized, RTG-powered Mariner Mark II, a class of spacecraft developed for missions beyond the orbit of Mars. "Cassini" was developed simultaneously with the "Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby" ("CRAF") spacecraft, but budget cuts and project rescopings forced NASA to terminate CRAF development to save "Cassini". As a result, "Cassini" became more specialized. The Mariner Mark II series was cancelled.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The combined orbiter and probe is the third-largest unmanned interplanetary spacecraft ever successfully launched, behind the Phobos 1 and 2 Mars probes, as well as being among the most complex. The orbiter had a mass of , the probe . With the launch vehicle adapter and of propellants at launch, the spacecraft had a mass of .


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The "Cassini" spacecraft was high and wide. Spacecraft complexity was increased by its trajectory (flight path) to Saturn, and by the ambitious science at its destination. "Cassini" had 1,630 interconnected electronic components, 22,000 wire connections, and of cabling. The core control computer CPU was a redundant MIL-STD-1750A system. The main propulsion system consisted of one prime and one backup R-4D bipropellant rocket engine. The thrust of each engine was and the total spacecraft delta-v was about . Smaller monopropellant rockets provided attitude control.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini" was powered by of nuclear fuel, mainly plutonium dioxide (containing of pure plutonium). The heat from the material's radioactive decay was turned into electricity. "Huygens" was supported by "Cassini" during cruise, but used chemical batteries when independent.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The probe contained a DVD with more than 616,400 signatures from citizens in 81 countries, collected in a public campaign.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: Until September 2017 the "Cassini" probe continued orbiting Saturn at a distance of between from the Earth. It took 68 to 84 minutes for radio signals to travel from Earth to the spacecraft, and vice versa. Thus ground controllers could not give "real-time" instructions for daily operations or for unexpected events. Even if response were immediate, more than two hours would have passed between the occurrence of a problem and the reception of the engineers' response by the satellite.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini"s instrumentation consisted of: a synthetic aperture radar mapper, a charge-coupled device imaging system, a visible/infrared mapping spectrometer, a composite infrared spectrometer, a cosmic dust analyzer, a radio and plasma wave experiment, a plasma spectrometer, an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph, a magnetospheric imaging instrument, a magnetometer and an ion/neutral mass spectrometer. Telemetry from the communications antenna and other special transmitters (an S-band transmitter and a dual-frequency K-band system) was also used to make observations of the atmospheres of Titan and Saturn and to measure the gravity fields of the planet and its satellites.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: Because of Saturn's distance from the Sun, solar arrays were not feasible as power sources for this space probe. To generate enough power, such arrays would have been too large and too heavy. Instead, the "Cassini" orbiter was powered by three GPHS-RTG radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which use heat from the decay of about of plutonium-238 (in the form of plutonium dioxide) to generate direct current electricity via thermoelectrics.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The RTGs on the "Cassini" mission have the same design as those used on the "New Horizons", "Galileo", and "Ulysses" space probes, and they were designed to have very long operational lifetimes.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: At the end of the nominal 11-year "Cassini" mission, they were still able to produce 600 to 700 watts of electrical power. (Leftover hardware from the "Cassini" RTG Program was modified and used to power the "New Horizons" mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, which was designed and launched later.)


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: Power distribution was accomplished by 192 solid-state power switches, which also functioned as circuit breakers in the event of an overload condition. The switches used MOSFETs that featured better efficiency and a longer lifetime as compared to conventional switches, while at the same time eliminating transients. However, these solid-state circuit breakers were prone to erroneous tripping (presumably from cosmic rays), requiring them to reset and causing losses in experimental data.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: To gain momentum while already in flight, the trajectory of the "Cassini" mission included several gravitational slingshot maneuvers: two fly-by passes of Venus, one more of the Earth, and then one of the planet Jupiter. The terrestrial flyby was the final instance when the probe posed any conceivable danger to human beings. The maneuver was successful, with "Cassini" passing by above the Earth on August 18, 1999.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: Had there been any malfunction causing the probe to collide with the Earth, NASA's complete environmental impact study estimated that, in the worst case (with an acute angle of entry in which "Cassini" would gradually burn up), a significant fraction of the 33 kg of nuclear fuel inside the RTGs would have been dispersed into the Earth's atmosphere so that up to five billion people (i.e. almost the entire terrestrial population) could have been exposed, causing up to an estimated 5,000 additional cancer deaths over the subsequent decades (0.0005 per cent, i.e. a fraction 0.000005, of a billion cancer deaths expected anyway from other causes; the product is incorrectly calculated elsewhere as 500,000 deaths). However, the chance of this happening were estimated to be less than one in one million, i.e. a chance of one person dying (assuming 5,000 deaths) as less than 1 in 200.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: NASA's risk analysis to use plutonium was publicly criticized by Michio Kaku on the grounds that casualties, property damage, and lawsuits resulting from a possible accident, as well as the potential use of alternate energy sources, such as solar and fuel cells, were underestimated.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The "Cassini" spacecraft was capable of transmitting in several different telemetry formats. The telemetry subsystem is perhaps the most important subsystem, because without it there could be no data return.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The telemetry was developed from the ground up, due to the spacecraft using a more modern set of computers than previous missions. Therefore, "Cassini" was the first spacecraft to adopt mini-packets to reduce the complexity of the Telemetry Dictionary, and the software development process led to the creation of a Telemetry Manager for the mission.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: There were around 1088 channels (in 67 mini-packets) assembled in the "Cassini" Telemetry Dictionary. Out of these 67 lower complexity mini-packets, 6 mini-packets contained the subsystem covariance and Kalman gain elements (161 measurements), not used during normal mission operations. This left 947 measurements in 61 mini-packets.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: A total of seven telemetry maps corresponding to 7 AACS telemetry modes were constructed. These modes are: (1) Record; (2) Nominal Cruise; (3) Medium Slow Cruise; (4) Slow Cruise; (5) Orbital Ops; (6) Av; (7) ATE (Attitude Estimator) Calibration. These 7 maps cover all spacecraft telemetry modes.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The "Huygens" probe, supplied by the European Space Agency (ESA) and named after the 17th century Dutch astronomer who first discovered Titan, Christiaan Huygens, scrutinized the clouds, atmosphere, and surface of Saturn's moon Titan in its descent on January 15, 2005. It was designed to enter and brake in Titan's atmosphere and parachute a fully instrumented robotic laboratory down to the surface.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The probe system consisted of the probe itself which descended to Titan, and the probe support equipment (PSE) which remained attached to the orbiting spacecraft. The PSE includes electronics that track the probe, recover the data gathered during its descent, and process and deliver the data to the orbiter that transmits it to Earth. The core control computer CPU was a redundant MIL-STD-1750A control system.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The data were transmitted by a radio link between "Huygens" and "Cassini" provided by Probe Data Relay Subsystem (PDRS). As the probe's mission could not be telecommanded from Earth because of the great distance, it was automatically managed by the Command Data Management Subsystem (CDMS). The PDRS and CDMS were provided by the Italian Space Agency (ASI).


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: After "Cassini" launch, it was discovered that data sent from the "Huygens" probe to "Cassini" orbiter (and then re-transmitted to Earth) would be largely unreadable. The cause was that the bandwidth of signal processing electronics was too narrow and the anticipated Doppler shift between the lander and the mother craft would put the signals out of the system's range. Thus, "Cassini" receiver would be unable to receive the data from "Huygens" during its descent to Titan.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: A work-around was found to recover the mission. The trajectory of "Cassini" was altered to reduce the line of sight velocity and therefore the doppler shift. "Cassini"'s subsequent trajectory was identical to the previously planned one, although the change replaced two orbits prior to the "Huygens" mission with three, shorter orbits.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The "Cassini" space probe performed two gravitational-assist flybys of Venus on April 26, 1998, and June 24, 1999. These flybys provided the space probe with enough momentum to travel all the way out to the asteroid belt, while the Sun's gravity pulled the space probe back into the inner Solar System.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On August 18, 1999, at 03:28 UTC, the craft made a gravitational-assist flyby of the Earth. One hour and 20 minutes before closest approach, "Cassini" made its closest approach to the Earth's Moon at 377,000 kilometers, and it took a series of calibration photos.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On January 23, 2000, "Cassini" performed a flyby of the asteroid 2685 Masursky at around 10:00 UTC. It took photos in the period five to seven hours before the flyby at a distance of and a diameter of was estimated for the asteroid.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini" made its closest approach to Jupiter on December 30, 2000, at 9.7 million kilometers, and made many scientific measurements. About 26,000 images of Jupiter, its faint rings, and its moons were taken during the six-month flyby. It produced the most detailed global color portrait of the planet yet (see image at right), in which the smallest visible features are approximately across.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: A major finding of the flyby, announced on March 6, 2003, was of Jupiter's atmospheric circulation. Dark "belts" alternate with light "zones" in the atmosphere, and scientists had long considered the zones, with their pale clouds, to be areas of upwelling air, partly because many clouds on Earth form where air is rising. But analysis of "Cassini" imagery showed that individual storm cells of upwelling bright-white clouds, too small to see from Earth, pop up almost without exception in the dark belts. According to Anthony Del Genio of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, "the belts must be the areas of net-rising atmospheric motion on Jupiter, [so] the net motion in the zones has to be sinking."


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: Other atmospheric observations included a swirling dark oval of high atmospheric haze, about the size of the Great Red Spot, near Jupiter's north pole. Infrared imagery revealed aspects of circulation near the poles, with bands of globe-encircling winds, with adjacent bands moving in opposite directions.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The same announcement also discussed the nature of Jupiter's rings. Light scattering by particles in the rings showed the particles were irregularly shaped (rather than spherical) and likely originate as ejecta from micrometeorite impacts on Jupiter's moons, probably Metis and Adrastea.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On October 10, 2003, the mission's science team announced the results of tests of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, performed by using radio waves transmitted from the "Cassini" space probe. The radio scientists measured a frequency shift in the radio waves to and from the spacecraft, as they passed close to the Sun. According to the general theory of relativity, a massive object like the Sun causes space-time to curve, causing a beam of radiowaves travelling out of its gravitational well to decrease in frequency and radiowaves travelling into the gravitational well to increase in frequency, referred to as gravitational redshift / blueshift.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: Although some measurable deviations from the values calculated using the general theory of relativity are predicted by some unusual cosmological models, no such deviations were found by this experiment. Previous tests using radiowaves transmitted by the "Viking" and "Voyager" space probes were in agreement with the calculated values from general relativity to within an accuracy of one part in one thousand. The more refined measurements from the "Cassini" space probe experiment improved this accuracy to about one part in 51,000. The data firmly support Einstein's general theory of relativity.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In total, the "Cassini" mission discovered seven new moons orbiting Saturn. Using images taken by "Cassini", researchers discovered Methone, Pallene and Polydeuces in 2004, although later analysis revealed that Voyager 2 had photographed Pallene in its 1981 flyby of the ringed planet.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On May 1, 2005, a new moon was discovered by "Cassini" in the Keeler gap. It was given the designation S/2005 S 1 before being named Daphnis. A fifth new moon was discovered by "Cassini" on May 30, 2007, and was provisionally labeled S/2007 S 4. It is now known as Anthe. A press release on February 3, 2009, showed a sixth new moon found by "Cassini". The moon is approximately in diameter within the G-ring of the ring system of Saturn, and is now named Aegaeon (formerly S/2008 S 1). A press release on November 2, 2009, mentions the seventh new moon found by "Cassini" on July 26, 2009. It is presently labeled S/2009 S 1 and is approximately 300 m (1000 ft) in diameter in the B-ring system.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On June 11, 2004, "Cassini" flew by the moon Phoebe. This was the first opportunity for close-up studies of this moon (Voyager 2 performed a distant flyby in 1981 but returned no detailed images). It also was "Cassini's" only possible flyby for Phoebe due to the mechanics of the available orbits around Saturn.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The first close-up images were received on June 12, 2004, and mission scientists immediately realized that the surface of Phoebe looks different from asteroids visited by spacecraft. Parts of the heavily cratered surface look very bright in those pictures, and it is currently believed that a large amount of water ice exists under its immediate surface.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In an announcement on June 28, 2004, "Cassini" program scientists described the measurement of the rotational period of Saturn. Because there are no fixed features on the surface that can be used to obtain this period, the repetition of radio emissions was used. This new data agreed with the latest values measured from Earth, and constituted a puzzle to the scientists. It turns out that the radio rotational period had changed since it was first measured in 1980 by "Voyager 1", and it was now 6 minutes longer. This, however, does not indicate a change in the overall spin of the planet. It is thought to be due to variations in the upper atmosphere and ionosphere at the latitudes which are magnetically connected to the radio source region.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In 2019 NASA announced Saturn's rotational period as 10 hours, 33 minutes, 38 seconds, calculated using Saturnian ring seismology. Vibrations from Saturn's interior cause oscillations in its gravitational field. This energy is absorbed by ring particles in specific locations, where it accumulates until it is released in a wave. Scientists used data from more than 20 of these waves to construct a family of models of Saturn's interior, providing basis for calculating its rotational period.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On July 1, 2004, the spacecraft flew through the gap between the F and G rings and achieved orbit, after a seven-year voyage. It was the first spacecraft to ever orbit Saturn.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The Saturn Orbital Insertion (SOI) maneuver performed by "Cassini" was complex, requiring the craft to orient its High-Gain Antenna away from Earth and along its flight path, to shield its instruments from particles in Saturn's rings. Once the craft crossed the ring plane, it had to rotate again to point its engine along its flight path, and then the engine fired to decelerate the craft by 622 m/s to allow Saturn to capture it. "Cassini" was captured by Saturn's gravity at around 8:54 pm Pacific Daylight Time on June 30, 2004. During the maneuver "Cassini" passed within of Saturn's cloud tops.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: When Cassini was in Saturnian orbit, departure from the Saturn system was evaluated in 2008 during end of mission planning.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini" had its first flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, on July 2, 2004, a day after orbit insertion, when it approached to within of Titan. Images taken through special filters (able to see through the moon's global haze) showed south polar clouds thought to be composed of methane and surface features with widely differing brightness. On October 27, 2004, the spacecraft executed the first of the 45 planned close flybys of Titan when it passed a mere above the moon. Almost four gigabits of data were collected and transmitted to Earth, including the first radar images of the moon's haze-enshrouded surface. It revealed the surface of Titan (at least the area covered by radar) to be relatively level, with topography reaching no more than about in altitude. The flyby provided a remarkable increase in imaging resolution over previous coverage. Images with up to 100 times better resolution were taken and are typical of resolutions planned for subsequent Titan flybys. Cassini collected pictures of Titan and the lakes of methane were similar to the lakes of water on Earth.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini" released the "Huygens" probe on December 25, 2004, by means of a spring and spiral rails intended to rotate the probe for greater stability. It entered the atmosphere of Titan on January 14, 2005, and after a two-and-a-half-hour descent landed on solid ground. Although "Cassini" successfully relayed 350 of the pictures that it received from "Huygens" of its descent and landing site, a software error failed to turn on one of the "Cassini" receivers and caused the loss of another 350 pictures. While landing, for caution, NASA loaded Huygens with 3 parachutes.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: During the first two close flybys of the moon Enceladus in 2005, "Cassini" discovered a deflection in the local magnetic field that is characteristic for the existence of a thin but significant atmosphere. Other measurements obtained at that time point to ionized water vapor as its main constituent. "Cassini" also observed water ice geysers erupting from the south pole of Enceladus, which gives more credibility to the idea that Enceladus is supplying the particles of Saturn's E ring. Mission scientists began to suspect that there may be pockets of liquid water near the surface of the moon that fuel the eruptions.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On March 12, 2008, "Cassini" made a close fly-by of Enceladus, passing within 50 km of the moon's surface. The spacecraft passed through the plumes extending from its southern geysers, detecting water, carbon dioxide and various hydrocarbons with its mass spectrometer, while also mapping surface features that are at much higher temperature than their surroundings with the infrared spectrometer. "Cassini" was unable to collect data with its cosmic dust analyzer due to an unknown software malfunction.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On November 21, 2009, "Cassini" made its eighth flyby of Enceladus, this time with a different geometry, approaching within of the surface. The Composite Infrared Spectrograph (CIRS) instrument produced a map of thermal emissions from the Baghdad Sulcus 'tiger stripe'. The data returned helped create a detailed and high resolution mosaic image of the southern part of the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On April 3, 2014, nearly ten years after "Cassini" entered Saturn's orbit, NASA reported evidence of a large salty internal ocean of liquid water in Enceladus. The presence of an internal salty ocean in contact with the moon's rocky core, places Enceladus "among the most likely places in the Solar System to host alien microbial life". On June 30, 2014, NASA celebrated ten years of "Cassini" exploring Saturn and its moons, highlighting the discovery of water activity on Enceladus among other findings.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In September 2015, NASA announced that gravitational and imaging data from "Cassini" were used to analyze the librations of Enceladus' orbit and determined that the moon's surface is not rigidly joined to its core, concluding that the underground ocean must therefore be global in extent.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On October 28, 2015, "Cassini" performed a close flyby of Enceladus, coming within of the surface, and passing through the icy plume above the south pole.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In May 2005, "Cassini" began a series of radio occultation experiments, to measure the size-distribution of particles in Saturn's rings, and measure the atmosphere of Saturn itself. For over four months, the craft completed orbits designed for this purpose. During these experiments, it flew behind the ring plane of Saturn, as seen from Earth, and transmitted radio waves through the particles. The radio signals received on Earth were analyzed, for frequency, phase, and power shift of the signal to determine the structure of the rings.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In images captured September 5, 2005, "Cassini" detected spokes in Saturn's rings, previously seen only by the visual observer Stephen James O'Meara in 1977 and then confirmed by the Voyager space probes in the early 1980s.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: Radar images obtained on July 21, 2006, appear to show lakes of liquid hydrocarbon (such as methane and ethane) in Titan's northern latitudes. This is the first discovery of currently existing lakes anywhere besides on Earth. The lakes range in size from one to one-hundred kilometers across.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On March 13, 2007, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that it had found strong evidence of seas of methane and ethane in the northern hemisphere of Titan. At least one of these is larger than any of the Great Lakes in North America.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In November 2006, scientists discovered a storm at the south pole of Saturn with a distinct eyewall. This is characteristic of a hurricane on Earth and had never been seen on another planet before. Unlike a terrestrial hurricane, the storm appears to be stationary at the pole. The storm is across, and high, with winds blowing at .


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On September 10, 2007, "Cassini" completed its flyby of the strange, two-toned, walnut-shaped moon, Iapetus. Images were taken from above the surface. As it was sending the images back to Earth, it was hit by a cosmic ray that forced it to temporarily enter safe mode. All of the data from the flyby were recovered.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On April 15, 2008, "Cassini" received funding for a 27-month extended mission. It consisted of 60 more orbits of Saturn, with 21 more close Titan flybys, seven of Enceladus, six of Mimas, eight of Tethys, and one targeted flyby each of Dione, Rhea, and Helene. The extended mission began on July 1, 2008, and was renamed the Cassini Equinox Mission as the mission coincided with Saturn's equinox.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: A proposal was submitted to NASA for a second mission extension (September 2010 – May 2017), provisionally named the extended-extended mission or XXM. This ($60M pa) was approved in February 2010 and renamed the Cassini Solstice Mission. It included "Cassini" orbiting Saturn 155 more times, conducting 54 additional flybys of Titan and 11 more of Enceladus.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On October 25, 2012, "Cassini" witnessed the aftermath of the massive Great White Spot storm that recurs roughly every 30 years on Saturn. Data from the composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) instrument indicated a powerful discharge from the storm that caused a temperature spike in the stratosphere of Saturn above normal. Simultaneously, a huge increase in ethylene gas was detected by NASA researchers at Goddard Research Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Ethylene is a colorless gas that is highly uncommon on Saturn and is produced both naturally and through man-made sources on Earth. The storm that produced this discharge was first observed by the spacecraft on December 5, 2010, in Saturn's northern hemisphere. The storm is the first of its kind to be observed by a spacecraft in orbit around Saturn as well as the first to be observed at thermal infrared wavelengths, allowing scientists to observe the temperature of Saturn's atmosphere and track phenomena that are invisible to the naked eye. The spike of ethylene gas that was produced by the storm reached levels that were 100 times more than those thought possible for Saturn. Scientists have also determined that the storm witnessed was the largest, hottest stratospheric vortex ever detected in the Solar System, initially being larger than Jupiter's Great Red Spot.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On December 21, 2012, "Cassini" observed a transit of Venus across the Sun. The VIMS instrument analyzed sunlight passing through the Venusian atmosphere. VIMS previously observed the transit of exoplanet HD 189733 b.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On July 19, 2013, the probe was pointed towards Earth to capture an image of the Earth and the Moon, as part of a natural light, multi-image portrait of the entire Saturn system. The event was unique as it was the first time NASA informed the public that a long-distance photo was being taken in advance. The imaging team said they wanted people to smile and wave to the skies, with "Cassini" scientist Carolyn Porco describing the moment as a chance to "celebrate life on the Pale Blue Dot".


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On February 10, 2015, the "Cassini" spacecraft visited Rhea more closely, coming within . The spacecraft observed the moon with its cameras producing some of the highest resolution color images yet of Rhea.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini" performed its latest flyby of Saturn's moon Hyperion on May 31, 2015, at a distance of about .


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini" performed its last flyby of Saturn's moon Dione on August 17, 2015, at a distance of about . A previous flyby was performed on June 16.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: Between 2012 and 2016, the persistent hexagonal cloud pattern at Saturn's north pole changed from a mostly blue color to more of a golden color. One theory for this is a seasonal change: extended exposure to sunlight may be creating haze as the pole swivels toward the Sun. It was previously noted that there was less blue color overall on Saturn between 2004 and 2008.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: "Cassini" end involved a series of close Saturn passes, approaching within the rings, then an entry into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15, 2017, to destroy the spacecraft. This method was chosen because it is imperative to ensure protection and prevent biological contamination to any of the moons of Saturn thought to offer potential habitability.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In 2008 a number of options were evaluated to achieve this goal, each with varying funding, scientific, and technical challenges. A short period Saturn impact for an end of mission was rated "excellent" with the reasons "D-ring option satisfies unachieved AO goals; cheap and easily achievable" while collision with an icy moon was rated "good" for being "cheap and achievable anywhere/time".


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: There was budgetary drama in 2013-14 about NASA receiving U.S. government funding for the Grand Finale. The two phases of the Grand Finale ended up being the equivalent of having two separate Discovery Program-class missions in that the Grand Finale was completely different from the main "Cassini" regular mission. The U.S. government in late 2014 approved the Grand Finale at the cost of $200 million. This was far cheaper than building two new probes in separate Discovery-class missions.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: On November 29, 2016, the spacecraft performed a Titan flyby that took it to the gateway of F-ring orbits: This was the start of the Grand Finale phase culminating in its impact with the planet. A final Titan flyby on April 22, 2017, changed the orbit again to fly through the gap between Saturn and its inner ring days later on April 26. "Cassini" passed about above Saturn's cloud layer and from the visible edge of the inner ring; it successfully took images of Saturn's atmosphere and began returning data the next day. After a further 22 orbits through the gap, the mission was ended with a dive into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15; signal was lost at 11:55:46 UTC on September 15, 2017, just 30 seconds later than predicted. It is estimated that the spacecraft burned up about 45 seconds after the last transmission.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In September 2018, NASA won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Interactive Program for its presentation of the "Cassini" mission's Grand Finale at Saturn.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In December 2018, Netflix aired "NASA's Cassini Mission" on their series "7 Days Out" documenting the final days of work on the "Cassini" mission before the spacecraft crashed into Saturn to complete its Grand Finale.


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: In January 2019, new research using data collected during "Cassini""s Grand Finale phase was published:


title: Cassini–Huygens

text: The spacecraft operation was organized around a series of missions. Each is structured according to a certain amount of funding, goals, etc. At least 260 scientists from 17 countries have worked on the "Cassini–Huygens" mission; in addition thousands of people overall worked to design, manufacture, and launch the mission.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: Rise is a 2022 biographical sports drama film directed by Akin Omotoso, from a script written by Arash Amel. Based on the true story of three young Nigerian-Greek brothers, Giannis, Thanasis and Kostas Antetokounmpo, who emigrate to the United States and rise to fame and success within the National Basketball Association. The film stars newcomers Uche Agada, Ral Agada, and Jaden Osimuwa in the three primary roles; with Elijah Shomanke, Yetide Badaki, and Dayo Okeniyi in supporting family roles.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: "Rise" was produced by Walt Disney Pictures and released as a Disney+ original film on June 24, 2022. It received generally positive reviews from critics.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: In 1990, Charles and Veronica "Vera" Antetokounmpo are forced to leave their eldest son Francis in Nigeria while they travel to Greece for a better life. They are unable to get visas due to the political climate and thus have no identification and must remain in hiding. By 2004, they are settled and have four more sons, Thanasis, Giannis, Kostas and Alexandros. Despite being born in Greece, they are not granted legal citizenship due to the restrictive laws; putting their family at risk of deportation and separation. Their Yoruba surname is Hellenized to Antetokounmpo amidst immigration processing after the family escapes refugee round-ups in Turkey. Charles tries to get documentation, but the double standard, in that he needs a visa for work, but he cannot get a job necessary to get a visa, frustrates the whole family.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: Thanasis and Giannis begin playing basketball in the park. While Thanasis shows natural skill, Giannis has difficulty learning the game, but displays potential. They are invited to go to Filathlitikos to use the gym for free where they meet the coach Takis Zivas who sees promise in the two. By 2007, Thanasis is a star player and Giannis has improved significantly. The Antetokounmpos continue to face adversity when Thanasis is offered a check by a promising college team, only for it to get denied when his family history is looked into. Charles buys a car for the family, but are nearly kicked out of their apartment despite having the money for the next two weeks.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: While playing a match, Giannis and Thanasis are scouted by drafters, particularly a young one named Haris Eleftheriou who is trying to convince the scout manager Paco to recruit the brothers. During the game Thanasis injures his leg; leaving Giannis to finish the game. Paco is unwilling to commit to them due to their status and Haris convinces Giannis to sign with him. True to their fears, none of the major teams are willing to sign Giannis; forcing him to have to play for recruitment. A Spanish league is willing to sign to him and will even grant Giannis citizenship, but he asks that his family also get recognized as well. Paco attempts to usurp Haris by offering them money, citizenship and immediate acceptance, but Haris will be dropped. Not willing to let go the person who fought for them, the Antetokounmpos turn down his offer.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: Haris reveals that the Spanish team will not sign him to them, but they will grant him eligibility to try out for the 2013 NBA draft. If he succeeds his whole family will be relocated to America. Giannis asks that Thanasis come with him as they and Haris arrive in New York City to meet with American agent Kevin Stefanides. Haris and Kevin continue to try and pitch Giannis to various recruiters and manage to speak with John Hammond who appears apprehensive, though they do manage to intrigue a representative from Nike. Giannis is nervous after hearing that he might not be good enough, but Thanasis supports him. At the draft, Giannis is thrilled to hear that the Milwaukee Bucks chose him as their fifteenth pick; securing his family's future.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: During the credits, it is revealed that Francis was eventually reunited with his family. Thanasis, Kostas and Alexandros all eventually joined the NBA as well while Charles died in 2017.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: In October 2020, a biographical film centered around Giannis Antetokounmpo and his family was announced to be in development from The Walt Disney Studios. Developed under the working title of "Greek Freak" (a basketball nickname for Giannis), with Akin Omotoso serving as director from a script written by Arash Amel, the project was stated to show "through faith, determination, and their unbreakable bond, [the Antetokounmpo family] unite[s] to lift themselves out of a life of poverty as undocumented immigrants living in Greece." Bernie Goldmann was announced to serve as producer, while Giannis serves as executive producer. Production was tentatively scheduled to commence some time in 2021, in Greece and the United States.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: In March 2021, newcomer Uche Agada was cast to play Giannis Antetokounmpo after seeing a social media post from the NBA star regarding an open casting call for the role. Yetide Badaki and Dayo Okeniyi were cast in supporting roles as the parents of Giannis, Veronica and Charles Antetokounmpo. In October of the same year, the official title of the film was revealed to be "Rise". The rest of the cast was announced with Ral Agada as Thanasis Antetokounmpo, Jaden Osimuwa as Kostas Antetokounmpo, and Elijah Shomanke as Alex Antetokounmpo. Manish Dayal and Taylor Nichols were revealed in supporting roles as Giannis's talent agent Alex Saratsis named Kevin, and the General Manager of the Milwaukee Bucks named John Hammond. Maximiliano Hernández, Eddie Cahill, Pilar Holland, and McColm Kona Cephas Jr. also joined the cast.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: Giannis Antetokounmpo made the official statement in his role as executive producer: "I am thrilled and honored that Disney+ is bringing my family’s story to people all over the world. My hope is that it will inspire those in similar circumstances to keep the faith, stay true to their goals and not to give up on striving for a better life."


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: Principal photography was revealed to have already commenced in October 2021, with official production photos released by Disney. "Rise" was filmed in Athens, Greece making it the first Disney production filmed entirely in Europe.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 21 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.10/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 74 out of 100 based on reviews from 5 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: Calum Marsh of "The New York Times" found Akin Omotoso's direction to be sincere and convincing, praised the performances of the cast members, and stated the film succeeds to narrate the life of the Antetokounmpo family across the obstacles they encountered. Gary Goldstein of "Los Angeles Times" found "Rise" to be an inspirational and emotional sport movie, praised Omotoso's direction and Arash Amel's script, and applauded the performances of the cast. Pete Hammond of "Deadline Hollywood" called the performances of the actors excellent, stating Okeniyi and Badaki could not manage to be better across the film, found Omotoso to be skillful across his direction, and stated Amel provides an outstanding true-life story. Sourav Chakraborty of "Sportskeeda" found "Rise" to be an inspiring sports movie, stated Omotoso provides an atmosphere of tension across his direction, and praised the performances of the cast members.


title: Rise (2022 film)

text: Aramide Tinubu of "RogerEbert.com" gave "Rise" 3.5 out of 4 stars, praised the performances of the actors, called the dialogue of the film moving, and claimed Omotoso manages to capture the tension felt by the Antetokounmpo family across the barriers they faced. Jennifer Green of "Common Sense Media" rated the film 3 out of 5 stars, praised the depiction of positive messages and the presence of role models, citing hard work and perseverance, and complimented the diverse representations across the characters and their origins.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Euroscepticism, also spelled as Euroskepticism or EU-scepticism, is a political position involving criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies, and seek reform ("Eurorealism", "Eurocritical", or "soft Euroscepticism"), to those who oppose EU membership and see the EU as unreformable ("anti-European Unionism", "anti-EUism", or "hard Euroscepticism"). The opposite of Euroscepticism is known as "pro-Europeanism", or "European Unionism".


title: Euroscepticism

text: The main drivers of Euroscepticism have been beliefs that integration undermines national sovereignty and the nation state, that the EU is elitist and lacks democratic legitimacy and transparency, that it is too bureaucratic and wasteful, that it encourages high levels of immigration, or perceptions that it is a neoliberal organisation serving the big business elite at the expense of the working class, being responsible for austerity and driving privatization.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Euroscepticism is found in groups across the political spectrum, both left-wing and right-wing, and is often found in populist parties. Although they criticise the EU for many of the same reasons, Eurosceptic left-wing populists focus more on economic issues, such as the European debt crisis and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, while Eurosceptic right-wing populists focus more on nationalism and immigration, such as the European migrant crisis. The rise in radical-right parties since the 2000s is strongly linked to a rise in Euroscepticism.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Eurobarometer surveys of EU citizens show that trust in the EU and its institutions declined strongly from 2007 to 2015. In that period, it was consistently below 50%. A 2009 survey showed that support for EU membership was lowest in the United Kingdom (UK), Latvia, and Hungary. By 2016, the countries viewing the EU most unfavourably were the UK, Greece, France, and Spain. The 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum resulted in a 51.9% vote in favour of leaving the EU (Brexit), a decision that came into effect on 31 January 2020.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Since 2015, trust in the EU has risen in most EU countries as a result of falling unemployment rates and the end of the migrant crisis. A post-2019 election Eurobarometer survey showed that 68% of citizens support the EU, the highest level since 1983; however, sentiment that things are not going in the right direction in the EU had increased to 50%.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Trust in the EU had increased significantly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with levels varying from member state to member state.


title: Euroscepticism

text: There can be considered to be several different types of Eurosceptic thought, which differ in the extent to which adherents reject integration between member states of the EU and in their reasons for doing so. Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart described two of these as hard and soft Euroscepticism. At the same time, some scholars have said that there is no clear line between the presumed hard and soft Euroscepticism. Cas Mudde and Petr Kopecky have said that if the demarcation line is the number of and which policies a party opposes, then the question arises of how many must a party oppose and which ones should a party oppose that makes them hard Eurosceptic instead of soft.


title: Euroscepticism

text: According to Taggart and Szczerbiak, hard Euroscepticism or anti-EU-ism is "a principled opposition to the EU and European integration and therefore can be seen in parties who think that their countries should withdraw from membership, or whose policies towards the EU are tantamount to being opposed to the whole project of European integration as it is currently conceived." The Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group in the European Parliament, typified by such parties as the Brexit Party and UK Independence Party (UKIP), displays hard Euroscepticism. In western European EU member countries, hard Euroscepticism is currently a characteristic of many anti-establishment parties.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Some hard Eurosceptics regard their position as pragmatic rather than in principle. Additionally, Tony Benn, a left-wing Labour Party MP who fought against European integration in 1975 by opposing membership of the European Communities in that year's referendum on the issue, emphasised his opposition to xenophobia and his support of democracy, saying: "My view about the European Union has always been not that I am hostile to foreigners, but that I am in favour of democracy. ... I think they're building an empire there, they want us to be a part of their empire and I don't want that."


title: Euroscepticism

text: The Czech president Václav Klaus rejected the term "Euroscepticism" for its purported negative undertones, saying at a meeting in April 2012 that the expressions for a Eurosceptic and their opponent should be "a Euro-realist" and someone who is "Euro-naïve", respectively. François Asselineau of the French Popular Republican Union has criticised the use of the term 'sceptic' to describe hard Eurosceptics, and would rather advocate the use of the term "Euro opponent". He believes the use of the term 'sceptic' for soft Eurosceptics to be correct, since other Eurosceptic parties in France are "merely criticising" the EU without taking into account the fact that the Treaty of Rome can only be modified with a unanimous agreement of all the EU member states, something he considers impossible to achieve.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The European Conservatives and Reformists group, typified by centre-right parties such as Czech Civic Democratic Party, and the European United Left–Nordic Green Left, which is an alliance of the left-wing parties in the European Parliament, display soft Euroscepticism. It reflects a support for the existence of, and membership of, a form of EU but with opposition to specific EU policies, or in Taggart's and Szczerbiak's words, "where there is NOT a principled objection to European integration or EU membership but where concerns on one (or a number) of policy areas lead to the expression of qualified opposition to the EU, or where there is a sense that 'national interest' is currently at odds with the EU's trajectory." The European Conservatives and Reformist Group does not itself use the descriptions Euroscepticism or soft Euroscepticism and instead describes its position as one of Eurorealism, a distinction described by Leruth as being one that is "quite subtle but should not be ignored" given the association of the term Euroscepticism with "European disintegration". Leruth describes Eurorealism as "a pragmatic, anti-federalist, and flexible vision of European integration where the principle of subsidiarity prevails, aiming to reform the current institutional framework to extend the role of national parliaments in the decision-making process." Steven states that "Eurorealism is a form of conservativism, first and foremost, rather than a form or Euroscepticism, even if it obviously very much also has the 'soft' Eurosceptic tendencies which are present in a number of ECR member parties."


title: Euroscepticism

text: While having some overlaps, Euroscepticism and anti-Europeanism are different. Euroscepticism is criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. Anti-Europeanism is sentiment or policies in opposition to Europe. For example, American exceptionalism in the United States has long led to criticism of European domestic policy, such as the size of the welfare state in European countries, and foreign policy, such as European countries that did not support the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Some scholars consider the gradual difference in terminology between hard and soft Euroscepticism inadequate to accommodate the large differences in terms of political agenda; "hard Euroscepticism" has also been referred to as "Europhobia" as opposed to mere "Euroscepticism". Other alternative names for hard and soft Euroscepticism include "withdrawalist" and "reformist", respectively.


title: Euroscepticism

text: A survey in , conducted by TNS Opinion and Social on behalf of the European Commission, showed that, across the EU as a whole, those with a positive image of the EU were down from a high of 52% in 2007 to 37% in autumn 2015; this compares with 23% with a negative image of the EU, and 38% with a neutral image. About 43% of Europeans thought things were "going in the wrong direction" in the EU, compared with 23% who thought things were going "in the right direction" (11% "don't know"). About 32% of EU citizens tend to trust the EU as an institution, and about 55% do not tend to trust it (13% "don't know"). Distrust of the EU was highest in Greece (81%), Cyprus (72%), Austria (65%), France (65%), the United Kingdom (UK) and the Czech Republic (both 63%). Overall, more respondents distrusted their own government (66%) than they distrusted the EU (55%). Distrust of national government was highest in Greece (82%), Slovenia (80%), Portugal (79%), Cyprus (76%), and France (76%).


title: Euroscepticism

text: A Eurobarometer survey carried out four days prior to and six days after the 2016 United States presidential election revealed that the surprise victory of Donald Trump caused an increase in the popularity of the EU in Europe. The increase was strongest among the political right and among respondents who perceived their country as economically struggling.


title: Euroscepticism

text: A survey carried out in April 2018 for the European Parliament by Kantar Public consulting found that support for the EU was "the highest score ever measured since 1983". Support for the EU was up in 26 out of 28 EU countries, the exceptions being Germany and the UK, where support had dropped by about 2% since the previous survey. Almost half (48%) of the 27,601 EU citizens surveyed agreed that their voice counted in the EU, up from 37% in 2016, whereas 46% disagreed with this statement. Two-thirds (67%) of respondents felt that their country had benefited from EU membership and 60% said that being part of the bloc was a good thing, as opposed to 12% who felt the opposite. At the height of the EU's financial and economic crises in 2011, just 47% had been of the view that EU membership was a good thing. Support for EU membership was greatest in Malta (93%), Ireland (91%), Lithuania (90%), Poland (88%), Luxembourg (88%), Estonia (86%), and Denmark (84%), and lowest in Greece (57%), Bulgaria (57%), Cyprus (56%), Austria (54%), the United Kingdom (53%), and Italy (44%).


title: Euroscepticism

text: When asked which issues should be a priority for the European Parliament, survey respondents picked terrorism as the most pressing topic of discussion, ahead of youth unemployment and immigration. Not all countries shared the same priorities. Immigration topped the list in Italy (66% of citizens surveyed considered it a priority issue), Malta (65%), and Hungary (62%) but fighting youth unemployment and support for economic growth were top concerns in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, and Croatia. Social protection of citizens was the top concern for Dutch, Swedish, and Danish respondents.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The April 2019 Eurobarometer showed that despite the challenges of the past years, and in cases such as the ongoing debate surrounding Brexit, possibly even because of it, the European sense of togetherness had not weakened, with 68% of respondents across the EU27 believing that their countries have benefited from being part of the EU, a historically high level since 1983. On the other hand, more Europeans (27%) were uncertain and saw the EU as "neither a good thing nor a bad thing", an increase in 19 countries. Despite the overall positive attitude towards the EU but in line with the uncertainty expressed by a growing number of Europeans, the feeling that things were not going in the right direction in both the EU and in their own countries had increased to 50% on EU average since September 2018.


title: Euroscepticism

text: A study analysed voting records of the Fifth European Parliament and ranked groups, concluding: "Towards the top of the figure are the more pro-European parties (PES, EPP-ED, and ALDE), whereas towards the bottom of the figure are the more anti-European parties (EUL/NGL, G/EFA, UEN and EDD)."


title: Euroscepticism

text: In 2004, 37 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the UK, Poland, Denmark and Sweden founded a new European Parliament group called "Independence and Democracy" from the old Europe of Democracies and Diversities (EDD) group.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The main goal of the ID group was to reject the proposed Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe. Some delegations within the group, notably that from UKIP, also advocated the complete withdrawal of their country from the EU, while others only wished to limit further European integration.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The elections of 2009 saw a significant fall in support in some areas for Eurosceptic parties, with all such MEPs from Poland, Denmark and Sweden losing their seats. In the UK, the Eurosceptic UKIP achieved second place in the election, finishing ahead of the governing Labour Party, and the British National Party (BNP) won its first-ever two MEPs. Although new members joined the ID group from Greece and the Netherlands, it was unclear whether the group would reform in the new parliament.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The ID group did reform, as the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) and is represented by 32 MEPs from nine countries.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The elections of 2014 saw a big anti-establishment vote in favour of Eurosceptic parties, which took around a quarter of the seats available. Those that came first their national elections included: UKIP in the UK (the first time since 1906 that a party other than Labour or the Conservatives had won a national vote), the National Front in France, the People's Party in Denmark and Syriza in Greece. Second places were taken by Sinn Féin in Ireland and the Five Star Movement in Italy. Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, agreed following the election to re-evaluate the economic area's agenda and to launch consultations on future policy areas with the 28 member states.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The elections of 2019 saw the centre-left and centre-right parties suffer significant losses including losing their overall majority, while green, pro-EU liberal, and some Eurosceptic right wing parties saw significant gains. Those that came first in their national elections included: the Brexit Party in the UK (which was only launched on 12 April 2019 by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage), the National Rally of France (formerly the National Front party until June 2018), Fidesz in Hungary, Lega in Italy, and Law and Justice in Poland. There were also notable falls in support for the Danish People's Party (previously topped the 2014 European election). Whilst Vox got elected with 3 seats, Spain's first Eurosceptic party and Belgium's Vlaams Belang rallied to gain second place after its poor 2014 result.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), established in 1956, is a right-wing populist party that mainly attracts support from young people and workers. In 1989, it changed its stance over the EU to Euroscepticism. It opposed Austria joining the EU in 1994, and opposed the introduction of the euro in 1998. The party would like to leave the EU if it threatens to develop into a country, or if Turkey joins. The FPÖ received 20–27% of the national vote in the 1990s, and more recently received 18% in 2008. Following the 2017 Austrian legislative election, it has 51/183 National Council seats, 16/62 Federal Council seats, and 4/19 European Parliament seats.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ), established in 2005, is a socially conservative party that has always held Eurosceptic elements. In 2011 the party openly supported leaving the eurozone, and in 2012 it announced that it supported a full withdrawal from the European Union. The party has also called upon a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. In polls it currently receives around 10–15%, although in one state it did receive 45% of the vote in 2009. Since the 2017 election, it has 0/183 National Council seats, 0/62 Federal Council seats, and 0/19 European Parliament seats.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Team Stronach, established in 2012, has campaigned to reform the European Union, as well as to replace the euro with an Austrian Euro. In 2012, it regularly received 8–10% support in national polls. Politicians from many different parties (including the Social Democratic Party and the BZÖ) as well as previous independents switched their allegiances to the new party upon creation. In two local elections in March 2013, it won 11% of the vote in Carinthia, and 10% of the vote in Lower Austria. It dissolved in 2017


title: Euroscepticism

text: Ewald Stadler, a former member of FPÖ (and later of BZÖ) was very Eurosceptic, but in 2011 became a member of the European Parliament due to the Lisbon Treaty. Before Stadler accepted the seat, this led to heavy critics by Jörg Leichtfried (SPÖ) "Stadler wants to just rescue his political career" because Stadler before mentioned he would never accept a seat as MEP if this was only due to the Lisbon Treaty. On 23 December 2013 he founded a conservative and Eurosceptic party called The Reform Conservatives, although it has been inactive since June 2016.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the 2014 European Parliament election, the FPÖ increased its vote to 19.7% (up 7.0%), gaining 2 new MEPs, making a total of 4; the party came third, behind the ÖVP and the SPÖ. EU-STOP (the electoral alliance of the EU Withdrawal Party and the Neutral Free Austria Federation) polled 2.8%, gaining no seats, and the Reform Conservatives 1.2%, with Team Stronach putting up no candidates.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the 2019 European Parliament election, the FPÖ came 3rd with 17.2% of the vote which was only slightly down on 2014 despite a scandal allegedly promising public contracts to a woman posing as a Russian backer. This precipitated the collapse of the ruling coalition and a new election being called.


title: Euroscepticism

text: According to Eurostat, in the fall of 2018, 44% of Belgium people stated that they did not trust the European Union. The main Eurosceptic party in Belgium is Vlaams Belang which is active in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. In the 2014 European Parliament election, Belgium's Vlaams Belang lost over half of its previous vote share, polling 4.3% (down 5.5%) and losing 1 of its 2 members of the European Parliament. Despite the presence of Eurosceptic parties in Belgium, their weight is relatively low, as Belgium is predominantly Europeanist.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In 2019, Vlaams Belang stated in its program for the 2019 European Parliament election that it opposes the creation of a European state, would like to change the Economic and Monetary Union of the EU, and to end the Schengen Area, and refuses the accession of Turkey to the EU. More widely, the euro-sceptic arguments of the Vlaams Belang are based on four pillars:


title: Euroscepticism

text: The New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) is a soft Eurosceptic party in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Before 2010, the N-VA was pro-European and supported the idea of a democratic European confederation, but has since altered this policy to a more sceptical stance on further European integration and now calls for more democratic transparency within the EU, changes to the EU's common asylum policy and economic reforms to the Eurozone. The N-VA has obtained 26.8% of the votes or 4 seats of the Dutch-language college out of 12 (21 MEPs for Belgium) in the 2014 European Parliament election. In April 2019, it stood in European Conservatives and Reformists of the European Parliament, and can be considered a moderate Eurosceptic party.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the French-speaking part of Belgium (Walloons), there are four Eurosceptic parties. The first one is Nation Movement, a far-right party which was a member of the Alliance for Peace and Freedom in the European Parliament. The second one is National Front, also a far right party which criticizes the European bureaucracy, intends to guarantee and preserve national independence and freedom in a liberated Europe; it also reaffirms the Christian roots of Europe. The third one is the People's Party, classified as right or extreme right. In its program for the European election of 2019 the People's Party proposes to abolish the European Commission, reduce the number of European parliamentarians and fight against the worker-posted directive. For this party, the EU must be led by a president elected by universal suffrage with clear but limited competences. It also wants to renegotiate the European Union treaties, restrict the judicial activism of the European Court of Human Rights. It declares itself against the Global Compact for Migration. The last one is the . In early 2019, the party aims to reduce the powers of the European Commission, to abolish the Common Agricultural Policy, to abandon common defense projects, to simplify the exit procedure of the European Union, to reject federalism and to forbid the European Union to direct economic, fiscal or social policy, Finally, the Workers' Party of Belgium is an electoral and unitary party. It also intends to revise the European treaties considered too liberal. One of the Party's currencies is "The left that stings, against the Europe of money".


title: Euroscepticism

text: Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are NFSB, Attack, and VMRO – BND, which is a member of the Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists).


title: Euroscepticism

text: Bulgaria's Minister of Finance, Simeon Djankov, stated in 2011 that ERM II membership to enter the Euro zone would be postponed until after the Eurozone crisis had stabilised.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the 2014 European Parliament election Bulgaria remained overwhelmingly pro-EU, with the Eurosceptic Attack party receiving 3% of the vote, down 9%, with the splinter group National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria taking 3; neither party secured any MEPs. A coalition between VMRO – BND and Bulgaria Without Censorship secured an MEP position for Angel Dzhambazki from IMRO, who is a soft Eurosceptic.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Followers of Eurosceptic Attack tore down and trampled the European flag on 3 March 2016 at a meeting of the party in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, dedicated to the commemoration of the 138th anniversary of the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the 2019 European Parliament election, Bulgaria remained overwhelmingly pro-EU with the ruling centre-right Gerb party winning with 31%, against 26% for the socialist BSP.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Parties with Eurosceptic views are mainly small right-wing parties like Croatian Party of Rights, Croatian Party of Rights dr. Ante Starčević, Croatian Pure Party of Rights, Autochthonous Croatian Party of Rights, Croatian Christian Democratic Party and Only Croatia – Movement for Croatia.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The only parliamentary party that is vocally Eurosceptic is the Human Shield that won 5 out of 151 seats at the 2016 parliamentary election. Their position is generally considered to waver between hard and soft Euroscepticism; it requests thorough reform of the EU so that all member states would be perfectly equal.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Human Shield gained its first seat in the European Parliament with 6% of the vote putting it in 5th place.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views in Cyprus are the Progressive Party of Working People and ELAM.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the 2019 European Parliament election, there was little change politically – the conservatives won narrowly, the ruling DISY taking two seats with 29%, followed by socialist AKEL (27.5%, two seats) with no seats taken by Eurosceptic parties.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Petr Mach, an economist, a close associate of president Václav Klaus and a member of the Civic Democratic Party between 1997 and 2007, founded the Free Citizens Party in 2009. The party aims to mainly attract dissatisfied Civic Democratic Party voters. At the time of the Lisbon Treaty ratification, they were actively campaigning against it, supported by the president Vaclav Klaus, who demanded opt-outs such as were granted to the United Kingdom and Poland, unlike the governing Civic Democratic Party, who endorsed it in the Chamber of Deputies. After the treaty has been ratified, Mach's party is in favour of withdrawing from the European Union completely. In the 2014 European Parliament election, the Free Citizens Party won one mandate and allied with UKIP in the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFD).


title: Euroscepticism

text: The 2017 Czech legislative election brought into Parliament two soft eurosceptic parties: centre-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS) (11%) and far-left Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) (8%). And one hard eurosceptic party, far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) (11%).


title: Euroscepticism

text: An April 2016 survey by the CVVM Institute indicated that 25% of Czechs were satisfied with EU membership, down from 32% the previous year.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Dividends worth CZK 270 billion were paid to the foreign owners of Czech companies in 2017, which has become a political issue in the Czech Republic.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Civic Democratic Party saw its vote share rise to 15% and its seats doubled from 2 to 4. The Freedom and Direct Democracy party took 2 seats with 9% of the vote. KSČM dropped 2 seats leaving it with only one and a vote share of 7%


title: Euroscepticism

text: The People's Movement against the EU only takes part in European Parliament elections and has one member in the European Parliament. The soft Eurosceptic June Movement, originally a split-off from the People's Movement against the EU, existed from 1992 to 2009.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the Danish Parliament, the Red-Green Alliance previously advocated withdrawal from the EU, but in March 2019, the party announced it would no longer campaign for a referendum to leave the EU, pointing to Brexit illustrating the need for clarity before withdrawal can be considered. The Danish People's Party also advocates withdrawal, but says it supports some EU structures such as the internal market, and supported the EU-positive Liberal-Conservative coalition between 2001 and 2011 and again from 2015 to 2019.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The Socialist People's Party, minorities within the Social Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party, and some smaller parties were against accession to the European Union in 1972. Still in 1986, these parties advocated a no vote in the Single European Act referendum. Later, the Social Liberal Party changed to a strongly EU-positive party, and EU opposition within the Social Democratic Party faded. The Socialist People's Party were against the Amsterdam Treaty in 1998 and Denmark's joining the euro in 2000, but has become increasingly EU-positive, for example when MEP Margrete Auken left the European United Left–Nordic Green Left and joined The Greens–European Free Alliance in 2004.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the 2014 European Parliament election, the Danish People's Party came first by a large margin with 27% of the vote, gaining 2 extra seats for a total of 4 MEPs. The People's Movement against the EU polled 8%, retaining its single MEP.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Danish People's Party lost around two-thirds of their previous vote share dropping from 4 seats to just 1. The People's Movement against the EU lost their seat and the Red-Green Alliance got one seat.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The 2019 Danish general election saw the emergence of a new hard Eurosceptic party Nye Borgerlige which supports Denmark leaving the EU. The party won four seats in parliament.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The Independence Party and Centre Party were against accession to the EU, but only the Independence Party still wants Estonia to withdraw from the EU. The Conservative People's Party (EKRE) also has some Eurosceptic policies and increased its vote share from 4% in 2014 to 13% in the 2019 European Elections winning one seat.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The largest Eurosceptic party in Finland is the Finns Party. In the European Parliament election, 2014, the Finns Party increased their vote share by 3% to 13%, adding a second MEP. With their 39 seats, the Finns Party are also the second-biggest party in the 200-seat Finnish Eduskunta.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In Eurobarometer 77 (fieldwork in Spring 2012), 41% of Finns trusted the European Union (EU-27 average: 31%), 51% trusted The European Parliament (EU-27average: 40%), and 74% were in favour of the euro currency (EU-27 average: 52%).


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the European Parliament election, 2019, the Finns Party increased their vote share slightly from 13% to 14% and retained their 2 seats.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In its latest party platform written in 2019, the Finns Party is strongly opposed to further EU integration. The party proposes introducing a parallel currency within Finland in tandem with the Euro in order to phase out Finnish membership of the Eurozone and argues that while Finland is needed in the short-term in the European Parliament to defend Finland's interests, the country should also enact policies to help gradually withdraw Finland from the EU. During the 2018 Finnish presidential election, the Finns Party candidate Laura Huhtasaari stated that her campaign would support exiting the EU.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In France there are multiple parties that are Eurosceptic to different degrees, varying from advocating less EU intervention in national affairs, to advocating outright withdrawal from the EU and the Eurozone. These parties belong to all sides of the political spectrum, so the reasons for their Euroscepticism may differ. In the past many French people appeared to be uninterested in such matters, with only 40% of the French electorate voting in the 2009 European Parliament elections.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Right-wing Eurosceptic parties include the Gaullist "Debout la République", and "Mouvement pour la France", which was part of Libertas, a pan-European Eurosceptic party. In the 2009 European Parliament elections, Debout la République received 1.8% of the national vote, and Libertas 4.8%. In a similar way to some moderate parties, the French right and far-right in general are naturally opposed to the EU, as they criticise France's loss of political and economic sovereignty to a supranational entity. Some of these hard Eurosceptic parties include the Popular Republican Union and formerly the Front National (FN). Popular Republican Union seek France's withdrawal from the EU and the euro as well as France's withdrawal from NATO. The FN received 33.9% of the votes in the 2017 French presidential election, making it the largest Eurosceptic party in France. In June 2018, the National Front was renamed as National Rally (RN) and in 2019 dropped support for France leaving the European Union and the Eurozone from its manifesto, instead calling for "reform from within" the union.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Eurosceptic parties on the left in France tend to criticise what they see as the neoliberal agenda of the EU, as well as the elements of its structure which are undemocratic and seen as top-down. These parties include the "Parti de Gauche" and the French Communist Party, which formed the "Front de Gauche" for the 2009 European Parliament elections and received 6.3% of the votes. The leader of the Left Front defends a complete reform of the Monetary Union, rather than the withdrawal of France from the Eurozone. Some of the major far-left Eurosceptic parties in France include the New Anticapitalist Party which received 4.8% and Lutte Ouvrière which received 1.2%. The Citizen and Republican Movement, a left-wing Eurosceptic and souverainist party, have not participated in any elections for the European Parliament.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The party "Chasse, Pêche, Nature & Traditions", is an agrarianist Eurosceptic party that says it is neither left nor right.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the European Parliament election, 2014, the National Front won the elections with 24.9% of the vote, a swing of 18.6%, winning 24 seats, up from 3 previously. The former French President François Hollande had called for the EU to be reformed and for a scaling back of its power.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the European Parliament election, 2019, the renamed National Rally won the elections with 23.3% of the vote, winning 22 seats, down from 23 previously when their vote share was 24.9%.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is Germany's largest Eurosceptic party. It was elected into the German Parliament with 94 seats in September 2017. Initially the AfD was a soft Eurosceptic party, that considered itself pro-Europe and pro-EU, but opposed the euro, which it believed had undermined European integration, and called for reforms to the Eurozone.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the European Parliament election, 2014, the Alternative for Germany came 5th with 7% of the vote, winning 7 seats and is a member of the Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists. The Alternative for Germany went on to take seats in three state legislatures in the Autumn of 2014.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The party became purely Eurosceptic in 2015, when an internal split occurred, leading to Frauke Petry's leadership and a more hard-line approach to the European Union, including its calling for an end for German Eurozone membership, withdrawal from EU common asylum policies and significantly reducing the power of the EU with some AfD members supporting a complete exit from the EU altogether.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In July 2015 an AfD splinter group created a new soft Eurosceptic party called Alliance for Progress and Renewal.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the European Parliament election, 2019, the Alternative for Germany increased their vote share from 7% and 7 seats to 11% and 11 seats.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the 2021 German Federal Election, AfD won 10.3% of the vote and 94 seats whereas in 2017, they received 12.6% of the vote and 83 seats; this meant they moved from third place to fifth place, falling behind the Green Party and FDP, both of which had been less popular than the AfD in 2017. Despite their overall electoral decline, the AfD still emerged as the largest in the states of Saxony and Thuringia, and saw a strong performance in eastern Germany.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Golden Dawn, Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Greek Solution, ANEL, Course of Freedom, Popular Unity, and LAOS have been the main Eurosceptic parties in Greece. According to the London School of Economics, Greece used to be the second most Eurosceptic country in the European Union, with 50% of Greeks thinking that their country has not benefited at all from the EU (only behind the UK). Meanwhile, 33% of Greeks viewed Greek membership in EU as a good thing, marginally ahead of the UK. 81% of Greeks felt that the EU was going in the wrong direction. These figures represented a major increase in Euroscepticism in Greece since 2009.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In June 2012, the Eurosceptic parties in Greece that were represented in the parliament before the Election in January 2015 (ANEL, Golden Dawn, KKE) got 45.8% of the votes and 40.3% of the seats in the parliament. In the legislative election of January 2015 the pro-European (left and right-wing) parties (ND, PASOK, Potami, KIDISO, EK and Prasinoi-DIMAR) got 43.3% of the votes. The Eurosceptic parties got 54.6%. The Eurosceptic left (KKE, ANTARSYA-MARS and KKE (M–L)/M–L KKE) got 42.6% of the votes and the Eurosceptic right (Golden Dawn, ANEL and LAOS) got 12.1% of the votes, with Syriza ahead with 36.3%. The Eurosceptic parties got 194 seats in the new parliament and the pro-EU parties got 106 seats.


title: Euroscepticism

text: According to the polls conducted in June and July 2015 (12 polls), the Eurosceptic left would get on average 48.0% (excluding extraparliamentary parties as ANTARSYA-MARS and KKE (m–l)/ML-KKE), the parliamentary pro-EU parties (Potami, New Democracy and PASOK) would get 33.8%, the extra-parliamentary (not represented in the Hellenic Parliament) pro-EU parties (KIDISO and EK) would get 4.4% and the Eurosceptic right would get 10.2% (excluding extraparliamentary parties, such as LAOS, not displayed on recent opinion polls). The soft Eurosceptic parties would get 42.3%, the hard Eurosceptic parties (including KKE, ANEL and Golden Dawn) would get 15.9%, and the pro-EU parties (including extra-parliamentary parties displayed on opinion polls) would get 38.3% of the votes.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the European Parliament election, 2014, Syriza won the election with 26.6% of the vote (a swing of 21.9%) taking 6 seats (up 5), with Golden Dawn coming 3rd taking 3 seats, the Communist Party taking 2 seats and the Independent Greeks gaining their first ever seat. Syriza's leader Tsipras said he's not anti-European and does not want to leave the euro. According to "The Economist", Tsipras is willing to negotiate with Greece's European partners, and it is believed a Syriza victory could encourage radical leftist parties across Europe. Alexis Tsipras vowed to reverse many of the austerity measures adopted by Greece since a series of bailouts began in 2010, at odds with the Eurogroup's positions.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The government coalition in Greece was composed by Syriza and ANEL (right-wing hard Eurosceptic party, led by Panos Kammenos, who is the current Minister of Defence).


title: Euroscepticism

text: Euroscepticism has softened in Greece as the economy improved. According to a research in early 2018, 68% of Greeks judge as positive the participation of Greece in the EU (instead of 53.5% in 2017).


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the European Parliament election, 2019, the New Democracy movement, beat the ruling left-wing Syriza formation with 33.1% and 23.8% of the vote respectively, maintaining Syriza's 6 seats and prompting the Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to call a legislative election on 7 July 2019. In this election, which was won by ND, the pro-European parties (ND, SYRIZA, KINAL, MeRA25, and the extra-parliamentary Union of Centrists and Recreate Greece) got 84.9% of the vote and the Eurosceptic parties (KKE, Greek Solution, the extraparliamentary Golden Dawn and a host of other small mainly left-wing parties) got 15.1%. That drastic change in the balance is mostly the result of SYRIZA abandoning Euroscepticism.


title: Euroscepticism

text: Viktor Orbán is the soft Eurosceptic Prime Minister of Hungary for the national-conservative Fidesz Party. Another Eurosceptic party that was present in Hungary was Jobbik, which until around 2016, it was identified as a radical and far-right party. Those far-right factions, who left Jobbik, they decided to form the Our Homeland Movement party.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In Hungary 39% of the population have a positive image of the EU, 20% have a negative image, and 40% neutral (1% "Don't know").


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the 2014 Hungarian parliamentary election, Fidesz got 44.5% of the votes, Jobbik got 20.5% of the votes and the communist Hungarian Workers' Party got 0.6% of the votes. Thus at the time, Eurosceptic parties in Hungary obtained 65.7% of the votes, one of the highest figures in Europe.


title: Euroscepticism

text: The green-liberal Politics Can Be Different (Lehet Más a Politika, LMP) classifies as a soft or reformist Eurosceptic party given its self-professed "euro-critical" stance. During the European parliamentary campaign of 2014 party Co-President András Schiffer described LMP as having a pronounced pro-integration position on environmental, wage and labour policy as supporting member state autonomy on the self-determination of local communities concerning land resources. So as to combat the differentiated integration of the multi-speed Europe which discriminates against Eastern and Southern member states, LMP would like to initiate an eco-social market economy within the union.


title: Euroscepticism

text: In the European Parliament election, 2019, Fidesz consolidated their position by increasing their vote share to 51.5% and adding a seat to take their tally to 13. Former Eurosceptic (now pro-European) Jobbik dropped to 6.3% of the votes, losing 2 of its 3 seats. The Momentum Movement, a newly created pro-European party, came 3rd with 9.3% of the vote, with the strongly pro-European Democratic Coalition coming second with 16.1% of the vote. Our Homeland Movement got to 3.3% of the votes, gaining no seats.