On May last weekend, the Comité Nord-Est des Groupes Ufologiques (CNEGU) celebrated its fortieth anniversary at its 120th quarterly meeting held in Chaux-la-Lotière (near Besançon).

CNEGU was indeed create in October 1978 in Nancy, as a federation of UFO associations from north-eastern France and Luxembourg. The founding groups were GPUN (Groupe Privé Ufologique Nancéien), CVLDLN (Cercle Vosgien Lumières dans la Nuit), Groupe 5255 (52 = Haute-Marne, 55 = Meuse), CLEU (Commission Luxembourgeoise d’Etudes Ufologiques). Other associations active in that northeastern quadrant of the “Hexagone” joined the committee in later years.

Over the years all those groups have disbanded and no longer in activity, but the Comité Nord-Est des Groupes Ufologiques is still well and alive (without a real formal structure) as a committee formed by individual ufologists who survived the dissolution of each one’s groups.

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Among the main achievements of CNEGU, beside many field investigations, archival research, catalogs and several monographic publications, a special mention goes to the annual magazine Les Mystères de l’Est (published between 1996 and 2012) and the  VECA (Voyage d’Etude des Cercles Anglais) initiative to investigate crop circles in the UK.

Members of the Committee took part in almost all the most important initiatives of French ufology in these 40 years, from the European coordination (CECRU, EuroUfo) to the establishment of SCEAU (the Association for the Safeguarding and Conservation of UFO Studies and Archives), from the first intervention team on behalf of GEIPAN to the participation in the CAIPAN colloquium, keeping on a serious and real activity, preserving a wealth of skills and experience matured in four decades, based on the commitment and work of dozens of people. 

In the top picture: the 3rd meeting of CNEGU, held in Luxembourg in May 1979.

In the bottom picture: the main activists celebrating CNEGU forty years (from left: Raoul Robé, Michel Piccin, Gilles Durand, Thierry Rocher, Gilles Munsch, Jean-Claude Leroy, Eric Maillot).