(1) When awarding public contracts for passenger transport services by rail, public contracting authorities may freely choose between the open and the restricted procedure, the negotiated procedure with prior publication, the competitive dialogue and the innovation partnership. A negotiated procedure without prior publication is only available to the extent permitted by this Act.
(2) Article 5(2) of Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council dated 23 October 2007 on public passenger transport services by rail and by road and repealing Council Regulations (EEC) Nos 1191/69 and 1107/70 of the Council (OJ L 315 of 3/12/2007, p. 1) shall be applied in place of Section 108(1). Article 5(5) and Article 7(2) of Regulation (EC) No. 1370/2007 shall remain unaffected.
(3) Public contracting authorities that award public contracts within the meaning of subsection (1) shall require pursuant to Article 4(5) of Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007 that where there is a change of operator of passenger transport services, the selected operator shall take on the employees who were employed by the previous operator to provide those transport services and grant them the rights to which they would have been entitled if there had been a transfer pursuant to Section 613a of the German Civil Code [Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch]. In the event that a public contracting authority should demand that employees be taken on within the meaning of sentence 1, such demand shall be limited to those employees who are actually required for provision of the transport services being transferred. The public contracting authority shall provide provisions to exclude an improper adaptation of provisions under the collective agreement to the detriment of the new operator between the publication of the contract notice and the takeover of the operation. If requested by the public contracting authority, the previous operator is obliged to provide all information required for this.