Prime Minister Villepin's 2005 pronouncement was made against the backdrop of a tradition in France where public and private ownership of toll roads both have been present. Between the middle 1950s and the late 1960s, toll road concessions were awarded to state-owned firms and to mixed public-private companies in which the public sector had a majority stake. Between 1955 and 1963 five mixed companies were created, which were called "sociétés d'économie mixte concessionnaries d'autoroutes", or SEMCAs (Fayard, Gaeta and Quinet, 2005). Throughout the 1960s the SEMCAs were little more than "paper organizations" (Fayard, Gaeta and Quinet, 2005), with no substantive role in the management of concessions. In the late 1960's, reforms were implemented in order to give the SEMCAs more autonomy and responsibility. These reforms allowed private companies to own motorway concessions. Between 1970 and 1973 four private companies obtained toll road concessions.
In the early 1980''s the French motorway system faced serious financial problems due in part to an increase in gas prices and an economic downturn that retarded the growth of traffic. In 1982, the French government took over three of the four private concessions and a new government agency, Autoroutes de France (ADF) was established. This change allowed the government to cross-subsidize various toll roads.
Extension of the motorway network intensified through the 1990s and a restructuring of the ownership of toll roads was undertaken in order to modernize the concession system and to stimulate toll road investment. In order to promote financial viability, the SEMCAs were consolidated into three main groups based on geography. These groups were Autoroutes du Sud de la France (ASF), Autoroutes Paris-Rhin-Rhône (APRR) and Société des Autoroutes du Nord et de l'Est de la France (Sanef). These are the toll roads that were privatized in 2006 and are the subject of this paper.