Slovakia Reopens the EUR 1.57bn D1 Turany-Hubova Tender With Its EUR 870m Tunnel Line Still Unverified

I will say this plainly. The line that decides this motorway is the one nobody can check. Slovakia's value-for-money unit put the mined tunnel works near EUR 870m and could not verify it.

The Office for Public Procurement stopped the objection proceedings against the D1 Turany-Hubova tender on 21 October 2026. The complainant had withdrawn in full. TASR reported the same day that the National Motorway Company moved the participation deadline to 19 November 2026. The contract carries an estimated value of EUR 1.573bn excluding VAT, design included.

Two thirds of the alignment runs underground

The section is 13.5 km long. The Korbelka tunnel accounts for about 5.8 km of it and the Havran tunnel for about 2.7 km. The finance ministry's Value for Money unit gives the Korbelka tubes as 5,830 and 5,823 metres. It puts the Havran tubes at 2,750 and 2,704 metres. That is roughly 8.6 km of twin-tube hard rock inside a 13.5 km contract.

A contract shaped that way is a tunnelling contract wearing a motorway label. The qualifying population is a hard rock tunnelling population. Road builders on their own cannot prime it. Few European firms carry that much free capacity. Packaging it all in one lot therefore sets the short list before a single price arrives.

The state's own appraisal says the economics do not work

The Value for Money unit assessed the scheme in May 2024, with a correction issued on 27 May. It put total investment at EUR 1.9bn including VAT, about EUR 141m per kilometre. The benefit-cost ratio came out at 0.55. The economic internal rate of return was 1.38 per cent and the economic net present value about minus EUR 575m.

The traffic case behind those numbers is modest. The parallel I/18 road carried about 17,000 vehicles a day in 2022. With the motorway open in 2032 the unit forecasts about 14,600 vehicles a day on the D1. About 7,300 stay on the I/18. The same assessment still called completion necessary, because Slovakia owes the link under its trans-European network obligations.

That combination tells a bidder and a lender what the tender is for. A ratio of 0.55 means the appraisal does not expect the scheme to repay its cost in economic terms. The decision was taken on network obligation instead. So the procurement is a cost-control exercise, and it should be run and judged as one.

The largest item is the one the state could not evidence

Inside that appraisal sits the finding that matters most for pricing. The mined tunnel line was valued at about EUR 870m. The unit wrote that it could not be verified as presented. It asked for the item to be broken into separate excavation and water-protection elements. It also asked for the whole budget to be reviewed for double counting and overpricing.

The live procurement runs at EUR 1.573bn excluding VAT, below the EUR 1.9bn gross figure in the appraisal. Two years have passed and the published estimate has moved. What has not been made public is a verified build-up of the single largest line. A quantity an employer cannot evidence is a quantity a contractor prices with contingency, then defends through measurement and variation.

Slovakia has built this much tunnel before and it took ten years

The nearest precedent sits on the same corridor. The 7.5 km Visnove tunnel was started by Duha and Salini Impregilo between 2015 and 2019 and left unfinished. Skanska completed it between 2021 and 2025 and the tunnel opened on 22 December 2025. That is 7.5 km of tunnel, two contractors and about a decade from first works to traffic.

Turany-Hubova asks the market for more tunnel than that in a single award. The procurement allows 2,555 days for design and works, close to seven years. Counted from a contract signed in 2027 or 2028, first traffic lands in the middle of the next decade. Slovak construction prices will move across that window and the estimate was set before it opened.

What the next six months decide

The first stage of this restricted procedure closes on 19 November 2026. Capacity statements and reference works will set the short list, and the short list will set the price. For contractors the commercial question is whether to prime the tunnel risk or sit behind a prime that will. For lenders and bonding lines the question is the size of the exposure against a single employer.

For the public sponsor the test is narrower and more useful. Publish a verified build-up of the mined tunnel works before bids are priced. The contingency the market adds will then shrink. Leave it unverified, and Slovakia will buy the same uncertainty twice, once in the bid and again in the claims. The last unbuilt section of the D1 is a tunnelling problem, and it will be priced like one.