One year after President Juncker announced the proposal in his State of the Union speech, the European Parliament and Member States have come to an agreement in principle on the extension and strengthening of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the core of the Investment Plan for Europe. The agreement reached on 13 September extends the EFSI's duration to 2020 and increases the target of investment to be triggered from EUR 315 billion to at least half a trillion euros by 2020. In other Investment Plan news, on 11 September, Portugal’s Nova School of Business and Economics received EUR 16 million in financial support from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to design and construct a new campus while on 8 September the EIB announced that it would finance innovative medical research with a EUR 75 million loan to Evotec. The investment is the first large equity-type investment under EFSI in any industry anywhere in Europe. It follows on the heels of EIB financing of EUR 25 million to Austrian biotech company Apeiron Biologics AG and EUR 35 million to German medical device company MagForce, as well as a loan of EUR 29 million to support the Ca' Foncello Hospital in Treviso. Meanwhile, the European Investment Fund (EIF) is investing EUR 20 million in ACT Venture Capital’s latest fund in Ireland. The EU is also providing almost EUR 1 billion, including a EUR 250 million EIB loan, to Poland to invest in energy networks and scientific research, while the EIF and Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK) are doubling the size of their loans to Polish SMEs from PLN 1 billion to PLN 2 billion (approx. EUR 500 million).