(WARSAW) - Poland on Friday inked deals with private investors aimed at saving shipyards in Gdynia and Szczecin and forwarded the restructuring plans to the European Commission, meeting a crucial EU deadline.

"Today simultaneously restructuring programs and privatisation agreements were concluded by us and the programs were forwarded to the European Commission," Poland's Treasury Minister Aleksander Grad told reporters in Warsaw.

Brussels must now approve the plans in order for the shipyards to stay afloat. Grad said Friday he expected the European Commission to make a final decision on their within "a few weeks."

Should the Commission fail to approve the restructuring plans, the yards -- under EU competition regulations -- will be required to repay 2.1 billion euros (three billion dollars) in public subsidies, a move that would all but certainly spell their bankruptcy.

The Commission has declined to approve a string of restructuring plans set forth by Warsaw in recent years, insisting they failed to meet competition rules.

"Today we signed initialled privatisation agreements with both investors, these are the agreements that we initially planned to conclude by September 30," Grad said Friday.

"We decided it would be worth signing these agreements in order to demonstrate how determined we are to complete the privatisation of these shipyards," he said.

"These agreements are of course suspended and will come into effect when the European Commission will give its agreement and will issue a positive opinion and when the Cabinet will give its agreement," Grad said.

Owned by the state, the communist-era shipyards in Gdynia and Szczecin are sinking in debt.

Ukraine's powerful Industrial Union of Donbass (ISD) is interested in acquiring the yard in Gdynia and merging it with the Gdansk shipyard it bought last year.

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

But both investors have said they want more public subsidies from the Polish government in order to push ahead with their privatisation and restructuring plans. The European Commission may reject the subsidy request.

Poland joined the EU in 2004.

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