Brussels, 30/09/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 30 September, Aleksander Grad, Polish Minister of the Treasury, met Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Mr Grad argued in favour of the latest recasting of the privatisation and restructuring plan for Polish shipyards, presented on 12 September. The Commission, which has not yet given its stance, had earlier said it was particularly concerned about the privatisation conditions proposed by the Polish state (EUROPE 9740). The earlier proposals did not in fact meet any of its criteria, Ms Kroes' spokesman stressed before going on to add: “If failings are not resolved by the new restructuring plans, the Commission will find itself under an obligation to adopt a negative decision”. This decision would order the recovery of over €2 billion granted by the Polish state to the shipyards, which would not be able to survive having to make such a reimbursement.
Warsaw's last proposal presents a significant reduction in shipbuilding capacity with the yards remaining under Polish state ownership. This, experts say, should meet the concerns of the Commission. Cutting capacities could on the other hand still be a stumbling block. This chapter of the dossier “could well be on the agenda”, Minister Grad's spokesman said, before the meeting scheduled on Tuesday about 6.00pm. The Gdansk and Gdynia shipyards have both been taken up by the Ukrainian consortium Donbass, which is proposing to close the Gdynia shipyard but to keep the Gdansk shipyard open. The latter is particularly sensitive by its historic role in the birth of the Solidarnosc movement. Ms Kroes' spokesman explained that the Commission was not against the owner of both yards focusing reductions in just one of the two, as long as total reduction was satisfactory.
Letter of support: Four state aid experts, including the former director-general of DG Competition, Alexander Schaub, say in a letter that solutions taken by the Polish authorities were the only ones possible. The letter, sent on 30 September to the Polish minister and to the competition commissioner indicated that: “Further meetings with the Commission are necessary to convince Commission services that the yards will be able to operate without further state aid, that the level of own contribution is satisfactory and that capacity reductions are adequate for compensation of the distortion of competition”. The authors of the letter acknowledge that “the Commission is bound by the rules of law” and cannot authorise derogation from a regulation that it has strictly imposed elsewhere, mainly in the case of shipyard restructuring in the former East Germany. Mr Schaub is currently employed by the Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer firm in Brussels in an advisory capacity.