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It ordered the ministry to submit an application by the 26 February deadline after discussing the financing details with European Commission experts last week.

An application for the Koper-Divača project will be submitted as part of the open call.

As part of so-called national envelopes, applications will be submitted for two more rail projects - the upgrade of the Poljčane-Slovenska Bistrica section and a siding at the Koper freight station.

The government also issued general guidelines on the project, which is currently estimated at EUR 1.35bn.

Most notably, it said the track needs to be built in a public-private partnership, as purely public funding is out of the question given the fiscal consolidation demands through 2020.

Execution of the project may not start before a public-private partnership is concluded.

In order to minimise risk, all stakeholders were ordered to treat the project through all phases as "a single, indivisible whole".

The guideline is an answer to critics who claimed that the project was likely to be broken up into smaller bits, which would increase the risk of corruption and rigging of public tenders.