POLAND:Polish workers from the struggling yet symbolically important Gdansk shipyard demonstrated at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels yesterday.
Waving red and white Solidarity banners and occasionally singing anti-communist songs, the 100 or so protesters demanded that the EU executive drop its insistence that the ailing shipyard should undergo a major restructuring programme to cut costs.
The European Commission is insisting that two of the shipyards' three slipways should be closed, a move trade unions fear would damage the viability of the yard. It has ordered Warsaw to implement cutbacks or face paying back huge state subsidies.
"We defended our shipyard successfully during communist times but now we feel the danger may be coming from Brussels," said protest leader Karol Guzikiewicz, as workers unfurled a banner asking "Will Brussels achieve what Moscow failed to do?" Pawel, a 22-year-old protester who has worked at Gdansk for just four months, told The Irish Times that he hoped the commission would back down in the dispute.
"I hope they don't impose the tough restrictions on us because the shipyard is the biggest employer in the whole region. If it closes, we can't make money," he said.
Gdansk shipyard was the birthplace of the anti-communist Solidarity movement, the first free trade union in communist eastern Europe. The trade union helped trigger the fall of communism in 1989 in Poland, a move that propelled the former Gdansk shipyard electrician and Solidarity co-founder Lech Walesa to the Polish presidency.
But the shipyard has suffered since the collapse of communism and has hovered close to the brink of bankruptcy. Gdansk is one of three big Polish shipyards (Gdynia and Szczecin are the others) that have received almost €1.3 billion in state aid since Poland joined the EU in 2004. The shipyards, which together employ 22,000 people, would probably be forced into bankruptcy if they were forced to pay back this money.
Warsaw has fought a rearguard action to protect Gdansk while agreeing to restructuring plans for the other two Polish shipyards. With a general election likely in the autumn the government is under pressure not to cave into Brussels demands.
After meeting representatives of the workers yesterday, competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said she was continuing to talk to Warsaw about how to ensure the long-term survival of the yard. "We do not want the Gdansk shipyard to close - if we did, we would have already required the repayment of subsidies a long time ago," she said.
Warsaw submitted its own plan for Gdansk to the commission last week. A decision is expected shortly on whether this would meet EU concerns.