Poland sells shipyards after EU ruling
Poland announced Thursday that it has sold two of its historic shipyards to an offshore-registered company.
The move came after the European commission ruled that the state aid flowing for years to the three shipyards, the birthplace of the Solidarity anti-communist movement, was in breach of EU competition rules.
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The fate of Gdansk shipyard is still depending on a verdict by the EU commission (Photo: Wikipedia)
United International Trust, a company registered in the Netherlands Antilles, paid a total of €82 million for the yards at Gdynia and Szczecin on Poland's northern Baltic coast.
While the government reassured angry trade unions and the roughly 9,000 employees that UIT has pledged to continue producing ships at the yards, it could give little details about the buyer and its intentions, adding just that the company was also planning "other forms of economic activity" in parallel to shipbuilding.
The move was required by the EU commission who ruled in November that Poland had been artificially keeping the three historic shipyards at Gdansk, Gdynia and Szeczin alive by handing out illegal state aid.
The sum acquired through the sale will be used to pay off the yards' creditors and the state subsidies which were faulted by the commission.
A verdict on the restructuring plans for the third and most famous shipyard, Gdansk, is still pending in Brussels. After years of mismanagement, the Gdansk yard was sold in 2007 to ISD, a Ukrainian investor, but still received some state aid, prompting a probe by the EU commission.
Gdansk has a particular symbolism for Poles, as it was the place where the trade union Solidarity was created by Lech Walesa in 1980. The anti-Communist movement grew nationwide and triggered the first real elections behind the Iron Curtain on 4 June 1989.
A trade union representing shipyard workers still carries the name Solidarity. Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently announced he would shift the 20 anniversary of the first elections from Gdansk to Krakow, after Solidarity refused to give a pledge of non-violence.
Born in Gdansk and an activist under Communism, Mr Tusk said that Solidarity of today was a "medium sized trade union" and he would not allow the festivities to be "hijacked by any political movement."
During a party congress of the centre-right European People's Party hosted by Mr Tusk in April, Solidarity protesters threw firecrackers and burning wheels at riot police, who responded with teargas and batons, injuring some 50 people.
