Originally established in France in the late 1970s, the French Group for the Study and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (GEIPAN), an official division of the French national space agency CNES, has long been tasked with the examination of UAP. From its launch in 1977 until 1988, the program operated under the name GEPAN, and then as SEPRA between 1988 and 2004. The program officially adopted its current designation, GEIPAN, in September 2005.

In the past, the French Gendarmerie was officially ordered to forward all its UFO sighting reports to SEPRA, thus providing the agency with a substantial collection of such incidents to analyze.

As the official French public UFO office, GEIPAN was tasked with answering questions from citizens regarding UAP and investigating sightings, and in 2007, GEIPAN released its files and made them publicly accessible on its website.