WARSAW, September 4, 2008 (AFP) - The Polish government on Thursday said investors interested in the privatisation of the country's ailing shipyards would present their plans in time for an EU deadline next week.

The historic communist-era yards risk bankruptcy under EU competition rules on public aid.

'Investors have assured us they will forward their restructuring plans on September 12,' Poland's Treasury Minister Aleksander Grad told reporters Thursday.

Following Polish promises to present viable plans for the restructuring of ailing yards by the September deadline, the European Commission said in July it was postponing a state-aid decision on the Gdynia and Szczecin shipyards that risked bankruptcy. Both state-owned yards are deeply in debt.

The move came after the commission had rejected a fresh set of restructuring plans presented by Warsaw as being out of step with EU competition regulations on public subsidies.

Ukraine's powerful Industrial Union of Donbass (ISD) consortium has expressed interest in acquiring the Gdynia yard. It wants to link Gdynia with the nearby yard in Gdansk, which it took over last year.

The historic cradle in the 1980s of Poland's anti-communist Solidarity trade union -- the main motor in the 1989 demise of communism in Poland -- the Gdansk yard is also in need of restructuring.

Mostostal Chojnice-Ulstein, a Polish-Norwegian consortium, is interested in the Szczecin yard.

Grad said a series of meetings between the companies and the Treasury were scheduled during the coming week.

The minister also revealed that fresh restructuring plans will demand yet more state subsidies for the yards, but that part of the funding would eventually be reimbursed.

'The sums are shocking,' he admitted. 'For the yards in Gdynia and Gdansk subsidies will rise to 835 million zloty (250 million euro, 356 million dollars),' Grad said during a Thursday parliamentary debate.

'For the Szczecin yard, total subsidies will rise to 400 million zlotys,' he added.

However, earlier the minister stressed 'the (European) Commission has been informally informed about the need for subsidies and the negotiations have not been broken off.'

A probe launched in 2005 by the commission found Poland had plowed 2.1 billion euros (three billion dollars) in public aid into the yards in recent years.

Warsaw says the total is far lower but Brussels may order that the yards repay a comparable sum should it reject the government plan on September 12.

The move would likely bankrupt the historic yards, which like Gdansk became symbols of Poland's anti-communist opposition.

According to Warsaw, some 60,000 people are employed in the yards and by their sub-contractors.