Poland to present new bill on shipyards

By Bartosz Sroka and Gabriela Baczynska

WARSAW, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Poland will present a new bill this month aimed at saving its three shipyards from bankruptcy in line with European Union guidelines, a deputy treasury minister said on Tuesday.

Warsaw has been at loggerheads with Brussels over state aid to shipyards in Gdansk, birthplace of the Solidarity movement, Gdynia and Szczecin since it entered the EU in 2004.

The EU is not satisfied with the plans Warsaw provided in September but the bloc's competition chief Neelie Kroes has not made a final decision, calling instead for adaptations.

Under Kroes' proposal, Poland would split the yards into smaller units and sell them to investors mostly from different sectors and use the proceeds to pay back the state aid.

Poland had insisted it would stick to the yards' original acitivity but on Monday approved Kroes' ideas. The plan would also require a change in Poland's law.

"The bill should be ready in mid-December at the latest," Deputy Treasury Minister Zbigniew Gawlik. "It should be placed in parliament somewhere in November." Gawlik also said Poland had sent a letter on Monday to Kroes accepting Brussels plan for privatisation of the shipyards. The European Commission said earlier on Tuesday it would study the documents carefully but made no other comment.

The bill is also expected to cancel some part of yards' debt to state institutions and decide on the future of employees.

It is highly controversial in Poland as the yards' labour unions fear it would lead to redundancies. Labour unions said they would organise a demonstration on Thursday.

The three yards, which together employ around 15,000 people, will be forced into bankruptcy if Brussels decides they should repay the state aid worth 2.3 billion euros.

The 27-nation bloc allows state aid only if it leads to long-term viability of a particular firm and has been in the conflict over yards with Warsaw since Poland became the biggest ex-communist EU member in 2004.

The Gdansk yard was sold to ISD Polska -- a unit of Ukrainian Donbas -- for $400 million in 2007. (Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Angus MacSwan