Réseau ferré de France (French pronunciation: [ʁezo fɛʁe də fʁɑ̃s], lit.

Afterwards, the trains were operated by the SNCF, the national railway company, but due to European Union Directive 91/440, the Government of France was required to separate train operations from the railway infrastructure.

[1] Unlike other infrastructure managers, RFF did not provide maintenance services or rail traffic control operations, which were both done by SNCF Infra on RFF's behalf.

RFF was mainly a financial structure focusing on debt refinancing, and contracted the majority of its infrastructure management to SNCF.

The creation of RFF was criticised because of the financial options chosen: RFF was subsidised by the French government in order to pay the interest on debt previously borne by the SNCF, which allowed SNCF to have a positive operating income and thus enabled competition to be opened.