04/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - EIF guarantee of €250 million for French SMEs. As part of the Juncker investment plan and with the support of the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI), the European Investment Fund (EIF), which helps SMEs obtain financing, made a commitment on Monday 4 April to provide a €250 million guarantee as part of a COSME agreement with the French bank Société Générale. With the support of this guarantee, this agreement will enable Franfinance, a Société Générale subsidiary, to extend its loans to more than 14,000 SMEs over the next three years and which would not have been eligible under any other terms because their profiles were regarded as too high risk. Pier Luigi Gilibert, the EIF Director-General, was pleased to announce that "this deal is in addition to the agreements concluded last year in France under COSME, which help us to support more than 80,000 SMEs in France". This is the second agreement between the EIF and Société Générale in 2016, points out the EIF, which also concluded a similar agreement last January, with a Czech subsidiary of the French bank. This agreement will help around a thousand Czech companies. (PH)