Evaluation site visits will now take place during February and March, before the Evaluation Commission - consisting of chairperson Karel Pilný, Célia Mendes, Marcel Wakim and Bernadette Brun - files a report to the European Athletics Council.

The Council is then due to vote on which city will host the Championships at its meeting in Amsterdam on April 23, following presentations by the bidders. 

Scottish city Glasgow is the only candidate to have held the event previously having staged the 1990 edition at Kelvin Hall.

It is proposing to host the 2019 Championships at the Emirates Arena, which was used during the 2014 Commonwealth Games and for various other events, including the Davis Cup tennis semi-final between Britain and Australia last September.

Apeldoorn is aiming to bring the Championships back to The Netherlands for the first time since 1989, when The Hague played host.

Toruń will be looking to follow in the footsteps of fellow Polish city Katowice, which staged the 1975 edition, while Minsk is vying to welcome Europe’s finest athletes to Belarus for the first time ever.  

All four cities submitted their application documents to European Athletics before the deadline this week.

The 2016 European Athletics Championships are due to be held in Amsterdam and the 2017 European Athletics Indoor Championships will be in Serbia's capital Belgrade.

It has also been confirmed that the 2018 European Athletics Championships will be staged in Berlin as part of the newly-established European Sports Championships, which is due to be held every four years.

Other events involving swimming, cycling, triathlon, rowing and golf will hold their European Championships during the same period in Glasgow.