By Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers

On 30 June, Donatien Le Vaillant, the head of the MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and Combating Cultic Abuses) since 31 January 2023 “left” his duties, according to an official statement. This Deputy Inspector General of Justice officially “wanted” to return to his senior position at the General Inspectorate of Administration. However, according to the French weekly Marianne, his departure was not voluntary but rather an ouster, following a disagreement between Donatien Le Vaillant and his superiors over the development of the structure he headed. It could be a resignation.

At the end of May 2025, the Minister of the Interior (Bruno Retailleau), with the agreement of the Prime Minister (currently François Bayrou) and the President of the French Republic (Emmanuel Macron), asked Étienne Apaire, President of MIVILUDES, to merge MIVILUDES with another state agency—the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization (CIPDR)—and reduce its status to one of its departments. This did not please the head of the MIVILUDES, Donatien Le Vaillant, who preferred to return to his original position. The status of the MVILUDES within the architecture of state institutions and of supervisory political authorities has, since its creation by a decree of President Jacques Chirac on 28 November 2002, been the subject of diverse ambitions. To understand its full scope, it is necessary to briefly review some basic factual information.

 

The political supervisory authorities of the MIVILUDES 

The structure of the political supervisory authorities has become very complex and even unclear. It has been criticized by the Court of Auditors due to the number of intermediary actors involved in the decision-making process. By the decree of 15 July 2020, the MIVILUDES, which was previously under the supervision of the Prime Minister, was attached to the Ministry of the Interior and placed under the chairmanship of the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization (CIPDR). Within the Ministry of the Interior, the MIVILUDES has successively been placed under the authority of: 

•       Marlène Schiappa, Minister Delegate in charge of Citizenship (6 July 2020 – 2022)

•       Sonia Backès, Secretary of State in charge of Citizenship (July 2022 – September 2023)

•       Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, Secretary of State in charge of Citizenship (10 October 2023 – June 9, 2024, the date of the dissolution of Parliament by President Macron)

•       Othman Nasrou, Secretary of State in charge of Citizenship and the Fight against discrimination (21 September – 13 December 2024). 

As of mid-July 2025, under François Bayrou’s government, there has been no official successor to this brief mandate characterized by its inactivity. However, by a decree dated 8 January 2025, François-Noël Buffet, Minister to the Minister of State, Minister of the Interior, has in his office an “advisor responsible for the prevention of delinquency and sectarian aberrations.” This could suggest that he is taking over from the Ministers/Secretaries of State responsible for Citizenship… 

List of the MIVILUDES presidents 

Until 15 July 2020, the President of MIVILUDES was appointed by decree for a three-year term. Since the 2020 decree, the interministerial mission has been chaired by the Secretary General of the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization (CIPDR). 

• Jean-Louis Langlais (2 December 2002 – September 2005: He spent all his career as a senior civil servant in the French bureaucracy, working for various Ministries, including the Ministry of the Interior. 
• Jean-Michel Roulet (October 2005 – September 2008): He was a “Préfet” (a senior civil servant in charge of the implementation of the state’s policies in one of the 13 regions in France and 5 overseas territories), a director of several important state institutions and an adviser of the Prime Minister.
• Georges Fenech (19 September 2008 – July 2012):This former magistrate and member of the National Assembly in 2002-2008 and 2012-2017 (The Republican Party) was appointed in 2008 and re-appointed in 2011 but he resigned in 2012.
• Serge Blisko (1 August 2012 – October 2018):A former medical doctor and a member of the National Assembly from 1997 to 2012 (Socialist Party).
• Frédéric Rose (21 October 2019 – 3 August 2020): Former préfet and civil servant.
• Christian Gravel (8 October 2020 – 6 June 2023):During his mandate, he was at the same time the Secretary General of the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization (SG-CIPDR). He was previously a “Préfet” and a senior civil servant in the ministry of the Interior.
• Étienne Apaire (25 August 2023 – …) :The current president is at the same time the Secretary General of the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization (SG-CIPDR). He was previously a magistrate for 30 years.

List of the MIVILUDES heads

 In 2021, a new position appeared in the overall organizational chart: “Head” of MIVILUDES. Since the 2020 decree, two people have successively occupied this position:

• Hanène Romdhane, magistrate and Dr in Public Law (April 2021 – 11 December 2022)
• Donatien Le Vaillant, former senior civil servant at the General Inspectorate of Administration (1 July 2023 – 30 June 2025).

It remains to be seen whether the current Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, will consider it essential to extend this function, the necessity of which does not seem obvious in these times of great governmental instability in France and serious budgetary crisis.

A damning report from the Court of Auditors to Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne 

On 22 December 2023, Pierre Miscovici, First President of the Court of Auditors, sent a highly critical report to then-Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne concerning the systemic dysfunction within the Ministry of the Interior of the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization (SG-CIPDR), under whose authority the MIVILUDES was placed following the decree of 15 July 2020. The MIVILUDES is therefore concerned. The report emphasizes, in particular, that “the organizational chart, whose formalization and communication were often incomplete, reveals unconvincing hierarchical relationships.” The main points of the criticism are:

Unsatisfactory policy management and evaluation in light of the challenges

• Poorly active inter-ministerial bodies

• A scientific council with a very inadequate track record

• A lack of information for Parliament

A General Secretariat without regulatory framework, whose organization and management require reorganization

• A non-existing status

• Unsatisfactory human resources organization and management

• Poor management of funds 

This internal control over the functioning of this very dense and opaque nebula, with very little respect for legal regulations, is damning. The hierarchical relationships between the institutions of the Ministry of the Interior, as the highest supervisory authority, the presidents and the heads of MIVILUDES are very unclear. It is not surprising that some officials in charge of MIVILUDES have preferred to resign. 

Quite recently, the MIVILUDES, which distributes grants for projects related to so-called “cultic deviations”, has been repeatedly convicted by the Administrative Court of Paris: four times already in 2025 and once in 2024:

List of MIVILUDES convictions by the Administrative Court of Paris (2024-2025)

The court convictions relate to defamatory statements made against religious groups which were accused by the MIVILUDES of “cultic deviances” in its annual reports.

2024

• FRANCE: Témoins de Jehovah c. Miviludes/ Tribunal Administratif de Paris (FR)

2025

• FRANCE: CAP Liberté de Conscience v. MIVILUDES/ Tribunal Administratif de Paris I (16 mai 2025)/ FR
• FRANCE: CAP Liberté de Conscience v. MIVILUDES/ Tribunal Administratif de Paris II (16 mai 2025)/ FR
• FRANCE: CAP/ Liberté de Conscience v. MIVILUDES/ Tribunal Administratif de Paris III (28 mai 2025)/ FR
• France : Malrevers Kibboutz v. MIVILUDES/ Tribunal Administratif de Paris (21 février 2025)/ FR

Since then, the Evangelical Protestant Church “Impact Centre chrétien” has also filed a complaint against MIVILUDES for defamatory statements in its annual report. (*) ‘Mille-feuille’ is a French pastry made with many layers of puff pastry. In politics, the reference to ‘mille-feuille’ constitutes a critique of the management of state affairs, characterized by excessive levels of administrative and political controls that paralyze decision-making processes.