Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

WARSAW, March 7 (Reuters) - Workers protested on Saturday during the launch of what could be the last ship built at the Szczecin shipyard, one of the birthplaces of Poland's Solidarity trade union that helped topple communism.

Solidarity trade unionists carried a coffin and burned an effigy of European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, whom they blame for the shipyard's plight, a report carried by television news channel TVN24 showed.

The Szczecin operation was second only to the now-privatised Gdansk Shipyard as a centre of the 1980 worker protests which spawned the Solidarity-led drive to dump communist rule.

The protest was staged during the launch of the Fesco Vladimir, a 184-m (603-ft) long container ship meant for a Russian firm. It was the 673rd ship built since World War Two at the once-thriving Baltic shipyard, PAP news agency said.

Last November, the European Commission ordered the Szczecin works and another Polish yard to repay more than 3 billion euros ($3.79 billion) in aid extended by the Polish government to save the ailing industry from collapse.

Under a Polish-EU deal signed in January, Poland has until May 31 to dispose of the yard's assets through an "unlimited, unconditional, open public tender", PAP added.

Some 5,000 people turned out to witness the launch in a somber atmosphere while trade unionists protested against the loss of their jobs.

Szczecin Shipyard vice-president Boguslaw Adamski said a way may yet be found to continue building vessels at the yard.

"Perhaps under some different name or different formula vessels may again be built here," he said, without elaborating, in the PAP report.

At the Szczecin yard, a communist government representative signed an agreement opening the way for Solidarity's legalisation on Aug 30, 1980, a day earlier than the Gdansk signing by the union's founder Lech Walesa.

(Writing by Rob Strybel; editing by Michael Roddy)