The decision was made after the European Commission (EC) recommended the cancellation of the tender as ZSSK planned to use money from the European Union (EU) Cohesion Fund via the Operational Programme Integrated Infrastructure, and the EC would have had to correct the amount allocated from EU funds if the contract were concluded.

A new competition is expected to be launched in January.

The tender was originally launched in September 2015 but was delayed by the Public Procurement Offic (ÚVO) following complaints against the tendering process in March.