The future of Poland's shipyards

The deadline set by the European Commission for Poland to present a concept for restructuring its three shipyards expired on Thursday. The newspaper Polska criticises the Polish governments since 2004 for wasting so much time. "The [last three] governments under Marek Belka, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and Jarosław Kaczynski respectively failed to come up with a restructuring programme for the shipbuilding industry that could meet Brussels' expectations. ... And only just as the offices of the European Commission were closing did the respective documents submitted by [Donald] Tusk's government arrive. ... Is it normal that the date on a postmark decides whether ships will be built in Gdynia, Gdansk and Szczecin? Unfortunately, yes. Practically everything is done in the last minute. In the game about Poland's shipbuilding industry what matters are not the billions in contracts or the thousands of jobs, but who is in power. What matters is whether the PiS [the nationalist conservative party] replaces the SLD people [the social democratic party] and then the PO [prime minister Donald Tusk's party] replaces the PiS. All this chaos only works to the benefit of the competition and private investors."

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