European Union regulators have approved more than $250 million in Polish government subsidies to the historic Gdansk shipyard, ensuring the future of the birthplace of the anti-communist Solidarity trade union.
An EU statement Wednesday said it reached agreement on the approval after the Polish government offered a plan to slash capacity at the facility.
The shipyard had been threatened with closure during a lengthy EU probe into whether government capital injections, tax write-offs, loans, and other concessions were damaging to competition within the 27-member union.
The docks on the Baltic coast rose to international prominence in the early 1980s, when they became the birthplace of Solidarity - the first officially recognized independent trade union in a communist country. The movement later helped end communist rule in Poland.