(WARSAW) - The Polish government set August 5 as a deadline on Friday for bids from private investors on the country's ailing shipyards that risk bankruptcy under EU competition rules on public aid.

"There are already many letters of intent. The interest is great but we must still see whether this translates into concrete offers. We're waiting for offers until August 4-5," Poland's Treasury Minister Aleksander Grad said Friday in a television interview.

Earlier this week Grad said more than a dozen potential investors, some from as far afield as India and the Middle East, had expressed interest in the yards since June.

On Wednesday the European Commission granted Poland almost two months to work out new plans to salvage two historic Polish shipyards after Prime Minister Donald Tusk pressed for more time.

Following Polish promises to present a viable, alternative plan by September 12, the commission said it was postponing a state-aid decision on the Gdynia and Szczecin shipyards, that risked their bankruptcy.

The commission, however, rejected Warsaw's latest restructuring plans, without which Europe's state-aid watchdog cannot consider past public support to the yards as legal.

Brussels has also allowed a third yard in Gdansk, acquired last year by Ukraine's Donbass group, until September to present restructuring plans.

A probe launched in 2005 by the Commission found Poland had given the yards 2.1 billion euros (3.3 billion dollars) in public aid since 2002.

Warsaw argues the total is far lower but Brussels may order the the yards repay a comparable sum should it fail to accept the government plan on September 12.

The move would most probably bankrupt the historic yards, which became symbols of Poland's anti-communist opposition due to their role as the cradle of Poland's Solidarity trade union - the main motor in the 1989 demise of communism in Poland.

According to Warsaw, some 60,000 people are employed in the yards and their sub-contractors.

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