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.
In the private sector the minimum retirement age is 62 (since 2010, previously was 60) and the minimum number of quarters of contribution to the retirement fund in order to receive a full pension is between 166 and 172 quarters depending on date of birth.
Before the welfare state came into being, some companies decided to give their employees a pension in order to attract workers to strenuous or dangerous jobs.
The employees of the companies who had previously been granted pension schemes decided to keep them instead of participating in the new plans.
The ordonnance (law created by the executive organ of State) of 4 October 1945, which is now incorporated into the set of laws regulating social securities measures (code de la Sécurité Sociale), officially permitted these older pension plans to subsist and they became known as the régimes spéciaux (special retirement plans).