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.
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 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).
In 2006, the National Assembly of France decided to create a new parliamentary commission about the influence of cults and the consequences of their practices on the physical and mental health of minors.
In 2008, a Union for a Popular Movement deputy, Jacques Myard, submitted a proposal for a parliamentary commission on cults, especially in medical and paramedical fields.
Jean-Pierre Brard, vice-chairman of the commission, considered that the propositions were "insufficient" and wanted to adopt a "special legislation" to effectively fight against dangerous cults.
Given the difficulty of defining the concept of cult, the Commission decided to resume the criteria followed by the Direction centrale des renseignements généraux, which it considers as "a body of evidence, each of which could lead to lengthy discussions."
Mindful not to give a result exactly impartial, the Commission nevertheless chose these criteria to conduct a partial analysis of reality, holding the common sense that the public ascribes to the notion of cult.
The criteria chosen by the Renseignements généraux (RG) to establish the dangerousness of a movement were criticized, because they are considered as vague and may include many organizations, religious or not.
One of the first criticism came from Bishop Jean Vernette, the national secretary of the French episcopate to the study of cults and new religious movements, which stressed that these criteria can be applied to almost all religions.
[9][10] In addition, Yves Bertrand, General Director of the Renseignements généraux from 1992 to 2003, spoke in 2007 about his collaborative work with the parliamentary reports on cults, and believed that Scientology and Jehovah's Witnesses do not deserve to be diabolized and "to put on the same level some companies of thought and genuine cultic movements that alienate the freedom of their members, the result is the opposite of the desired goals".
The first judgments on this issue were given in 2005 by the Administrative Court of Appeal of Paris after examining the documents to assess the merits of the refusal of the Ministry of Interior, who mentioned the risk to public safety.
"[17] The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God also obtained the right of access to the file made by the Renseignements généraux which justified its classification as cults in the parliamentary report.
In a decision of 1 December 2005[18] validated by the Council of State,[19] the Administrative Court of Appeal in Paris overturned the refusal of the Minister of Interior to grant the request of the association and ordered the files release.
"[attribution needed] On 27 May 2005 (just before he left office), the then Prime Minister of France, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, issued a circulaire which stressed that the government must exercise vigilance in taking account of the evolution of the cult-phenomenon, which, he wrote, made the list of movements attached to the Parliamentary Report of 1995 less and less pertinent, based on the observation that small groups form in a scattered, more mobile and less-easily identifiable manner, making use in particular of the possibilities of spreading offered by the Internet.
Several groups previously omitted in the 1995 report were added (Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, Anthroposophy, At the Heart of the Communication, Prima Verba, Energo-Chromo-Kinese).
[23] In addition, "the judges felt that the injury of plaintiffs was important (…) since the defamatory statements were made by a deputy president of the commission, whose authority and competence could not have been doubted by the public".
[25] In a press-release dated 28 June 2006, several deputies from the Socialist Party, from the UDF, and others, stated that "certain people had believed that they could celebrate a so-called turning-point in the French policy of defending individual and collective liberties against the dangerous conduct of cults and a renewed questioning of the parliamentary reports of 1995 and 1999, as a result of the appearance of the Prime Minister's circulaire.
The 30 members of the Commission included Georges Fenech (President), Philippe Vuilque (rapporteur), Martine David and Alain Gest (Vice-Presidents) and Jean-Pierre Brard and Rudy Salles (Secretaries).