Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France

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The French National Assembly, the lower house of the Parliament of France, set up a Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France (French: Commission parlementaire sur les sectes en France), also known as the Guyard Commission, on 11 July 1995 following the events involving the members of the Order of the Solar Temple in late 1994 and in 1995 in the Vercors, Switzerland and in Canada. Chaired by deputy Alain Gest, a member of the Union for French Democracy conservative party, the commission had to determine what should constitute a cult. It came to categorize various groups according to their supposed threat or innocuity (towards members of the groups themselves or towards society and the state). The Commission reported back in December 1995.^[1]

Some non-French citizens and certain organizations, including the Church of Scientology and the United States Department of State, criticized its categorization-methodology. The Parliamentary Commission always bore in mind the difficulties of establishing any objective classification, although it never called into question the actual ethical and political imperatives of doing so, especially in the wake of the Order of the Solar Temple "mass suicides" and other dangerous cult activities occurring around the world (such as, for example, the 1995 sarin gas attack in Tokyo's subway by the Aum Shinrikyo group). The Commission held various hearings with persons involved in new religious movement (NRM) activities or involved in anti-cult movements, and had the French secret service Renseignements Généraux give it lists of NRM activities and memberships. (For a list of the groups – with name-translations – included in the 1995 report, see Governmental lists of cults and sects.)

Subsequent French Parliamentary Commissions on cults reported in 1999 and in 2006.

In a 2005 circulaire which stressed ongoing vigilance concerning cults, the Prime Minister of France suggested that due to changes in cult behavior and organization, the list of specific cults (which formed a part of the 1995 report) had become less pertinent. The Prime Minister asked his civil servants in certain cases to avoid depending on generic lists of cult groups but instead to apply criteria set in consultation with the Interministerial Commission for Monitoring and Combating Cultic Deviances (MIVILUDES).