(BRUSSELS) - The European Commission said on Friday it would study "very quickly" an update on Polish plans to save its historic shipyards, which face a vital state aid ruling.

The commission said that Warsaw had provided "new information" concerning the restructuring of three shipyards hours before a midnight Thursday deadline it had set.

"It will now analyse the information very quickly to assess whether there are any concrete and material additions to the information that could influence the commission's evaluation of the restructuring plans already submitted," it said in a statement.

Europe's top competition watchdog has said that unless Polish authorities produce viable restructuring plans for the yards it would have to consider past state aid to them to be illegal.

In that case, it would have little choice other than to order the government to recover past aid from the shipyards, which could threaten them with bankruptcy.

With the deadline looming, the Polish government pleaded on Thursday for more time and three thousand workers from Szczecin protested in the northwestern port, calling for their jobs to be defended.

The three yards are etched in the national mind in Poland because dozens were killed there when communist-era security forces fired on workers demonstrating against food price rises in 1970.

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