(GDYNIA) - The future of Poland's shipyards, cradle of the Solidarity movement which sped the fall of communism, was in the balance Friday in the face of an EU ultimatum that could bankrupt them.

Their fate lay in the hands of the EU's executive European Commission, which polices competition rules in the 27-nation bloc and which has taken Warsaw to task over government subsidies, alleging the money was used illegally to keep the yards alive.

For Polish authorities and the thousands of workers, however, sounding the death knell because of Brussels' competition regulations is unfathomable.

"Saving our jobs and these Polish shipyards, built by Polish workers and engineers is our top priority," Leszek Swiatczak, a worker from the threatened Gdynia yard told AFP during a Friday protest at its headquarters. "The shipyards must survive."

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has vowed to take a firm line, warning he may turn to the European Council, which groups the EU's 27 member governments.

Thousands of Polish shipyard workers, meanwhile, have been protesting in their home ports this week, and have threatened to hit the streets of Warsaw and Brussels.

In June 2005, the Commission began probing 2.1 billion euros (3.3 billion dollars) in Polish state aid for the yards since 2002. Warsaw maintains the sums were far lower.

EU rules only permit such aid if it is accompanied by restructuring plans aiming to make shipyards economically viable, rather than simply keeping them afloat with public money.

On Wednesday the Commission gave Warsaw 24 hours to submit plans for three Baltic Sea shipyards, in the northern ports of Gdansk and Gdynia, and in Szczecin, in the northwest.

The yards and their subcontractors employ a total of 60,000 people.

The Commission has said that without viable reform plans, it would have to consider past state aid illegal, leaving it little choice but to order Warsaw to recover the money.

Such a decision -- which the Commission has warned could come by July 16 -- could bankrupt the yards.

The Polish government has been struggling to produce plans to satisfy Brussels.

In a last-ditch effort, Warsaw submitted "new information" late on Thursday, the Commission said.

"We will indeed analyse it as quickly as possible with a view to reach a conclusion by the beginning of next week," Brussels' spokesman for competition issues Jonathan Todd told reporters.

"We'll be looking for any concrete changes to what has been previously notified as opposed to any declarations of good intent," he added.

Todd said Brussels "has been trying to find a positive outcome for the shipyards for four years" and that nobody could accuse the Commission of "not having given very ample opportunities" to ensure their future.

Warsaw is pleading for more time, saying it is locked in talks with potential investors.

"We will be able to satisfy the demands of the European Commission ... if we have until the end of September to negotiate privatisation agreements," Treasury Minister Aleksander Grad said on Thursday.

The situation is complicated by a plethora of plans.

Gdansk has already been granted a September deadline because its privatisation is under way.

But it could still be threatened because it is also tied up in a joint privatisation project with Gdynia -- which, like Szczecin, is also subject to a separate proposal.

In an irony of history, Poland's shipyards have been victims of their own political role in freeing the country from communism.

They are etched in the national consciousness because dozens were killed when security forces fired on workers demonstrating against food price rises in 1970, a crackdown which fuelled popular discontent over the next decade.

The historical role of the Gdansk yard is even greater for Poles.

The independent trade union Solidarity was born there during a strike in 1980 which spilled into the other yards and sparked a national groundswell of opposition, hastening the demise of Poland's regime in 1989 and of the communist bloc overall.

Poland's return to democracy, however, also brought market reforms which worsened the yards' communist-era economic woes.

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