In France employees of some government-owned corporations enjoy a special retirement plan, collectively known as régimes spéciaux de retraite. These professions include employees of the SNCF (national railways), the RATP (Parisian transport), the electrical and gas companies (EDF and GDF) which used to be government-owned; as well as some employees whose functions are directly related to the State such as the military, French National Police, sailors, Civil law notaries' assistants, employees of the Opéra de Paris etc... The main differences between the special retirement plan and the usual private sector retirement plans are the retirement age and the number of years a worker must contribute to the fund before being allowed a full pension. In the private sector the minimum retirement age is 60, and the minimum number of years of contribution to the retirement fund in order to receive a full pension is 40 years. Employees who are enrolled in the special retirement plan can retire earlier.

According to the Conseil d’Orientation des Retraites, a governmental organism created to study the French retirement funds, the statistics for special retirement plans must be considered with caution for the following reasons:

• The population affected is different from the average population (for example the SNCF employs more men than women).
• The special retirement plans have the same purpose as early retirement plans in the private sector. In the private sector the average retirement age is 57.5 whereas the average age at which employees are eligible for full retirement is 61.3. The difference is paid for by the State in the form of early retirement funds or exemption from the usual obligation of searching for employment.
• The comparison with the private sector is difficult due to the differences in retirement allowances, the rate of employee replacement, and the differences in contribution to the retirement funds.
• The advantages offered by the special retirement plan are funded by the employer and form a part of the workers employment contract. For example 5 years in a career of 40 years represents 12%, however at the SNCF there is no 13th month payment (unlike in the private sector where employees receive two months pay at the end of December), and the average salary is 10% lower than the national average.

There are 15 special retirement plans. Most suffer from an imbalance in regards to the number of workers relative to the number of pensioners, in total there are 500,000 workers contributing to the funds and 1,100,000 pensioners. In comparison, in the private sector there are 18 million workers versus 15 million pensioners.

Because of this discrepancy the special retirement plan is partly financed by the State, or by the employees of the government-owned companies that are on the standard retirement plan.

There have been several plans by conservative governments to abolish the special deal and replace it with the standard retirement plan for government-owned companies and civil servants. These efforts have been highly controversial and have caused large strikes such as those of 1995 (1995 strikes in France) and November, 2007 (November 2007 strikes in France).