In recent days, the meeting of the Permanent roundtable on the former Ilva it practically ended with a postponementWhile the meeting chaired by Undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano was underway, the news arrived that the Court of Cassation would examined on October 20th extraordinary appeal against the order of the Milan Court of Appeal which had confirmed the closure of the blast furnace by October 28.
The government then proposed to the unions to meet after that hearing to have a more clear picture on which to decide. Therefore I am all commitments postponed which had been scheduled for the afternoon when the Council of Ministers was supposed to adopt the extraordinary measures for the protection of income and employment and indicate the general guidelines for the sale and reindustrialization. In the meantime, the government carried out an action moral suasion towards the related companies so that the procedures of the collective dismissals. The government, however, declared that it had the decree is already ready regarding the measures of extraordinary protection of which we have been informed by press previews and which is illustrated in general terms at Palazzo Chigi.
The government's action plan would consist of three great chapters, which concern the perspective of the ongoing races, social measures to address the occupational relapses of the possible suspension of the hot area (there was talk of a special redundancy fund for direct and indirect workers) and the projects of reindustrialization, with the possibility of reabsorbing the workforce of the former Ilva and any related industries that may be redundant.
Given the situation of the plant, these indications should be interpreted as follows: there will be the largest welfare plan in recent industrial history and at the same time everyone will pretend to go hunting for green steel butterflies under the Arch of Titus. A production perspective compatible with the open warfare by the judiciary and the demands of that segment of public opinion that has demanded, by bribing local institutions, the closure of the blast furnaces, would require a long time, significant public resources and very vague entrepreneurial resources and in any case concentrated (see the Federacciai consortium) on the cold-working area.
And the sindacatiThey reap what they (did not) sow, avoiding for years to name their real adversaries and to refute the dominant narrative of health defense, because – even in the context of the decline of the commissioner management – no judge was able to demonstrate that theex Ilva was not in line with the parameters which, at the European level, were available for steel production. This is the crucial point that characterized the entire dispute.
As with the automotive industry, environmental regulations are established in phases to ensure compatibility between production and remediation. For decades, industrial production technologies in the EU have been established based on health protection objectives identified at the European level in agreement with the WHO. However, in establishing these parameters, environmental remediation objectives must be compatible with other requirements affecting the various production sectors, such as issues of plant depreciation, investment resources, and coordination between different countries.
Above all, i production systems they need to have some precise references which must be followed to be in compliance. But the change proceeds step by step Based on uniform rules that, over time, become not an indicator of absolute safety, but a sustainable and progressive standard to be adhered to within a framework of legal certainty. When ideology upsets this balance, trouble ensues. Consider the decision taken at European level to phase out the internal combustion engine phase by 2035, when no European company was active in the sector: a decision that favored Chinese industry and put the European sector into crisis.
In the case of the former Ilva steelworks, the judiciary never limited itself to determining whether the plant had complied with current regulations and obtained the required permits from the supervisory bodies. Indeed, in the order issued by the Milan Court of Appeal last July that imposed a halt to production activities in the hot-rolling area of the former Ilva steelworks in Taranto by October 28, the appellants—the "Genitori tarantini" association—had requested that the Integrated Environmental Authorization (AIA) be disregarded, deeming it unsafe for health. The Court upheld the injunction and ordered Ilva and Acciaierie d'Italia to: suspend production activity in the hot area of the Ilva plant in Taranto within 90 days.
The closure had been ordered for two main reasons: the presence, not deferred, of over 2.000 tons of asbestos without removal requirements in the AIA 2025 and the persistence of the health risk from fine dust. The Court had come clean: the former Ilva was "guilty of innocence" because it did not violate regulations regarding limits set for pollutants. However, regulatory compliance does not necessarily mean the absence of a health risk. According to the Court, simply determining whether emissions met regulatory limits was not sufficient; it was necessary to ensure that the impact of those emissions did not create additional risks for the exposed population, taking into account multiple exposures, previous conditions, socio-environmental vulnerabilities, and the epidemiological situation of the area.
As if theHarp, the competent authority, failed to consider these aspects in its authorizations. The company filed an appeal, which was rejected on September 9th with an order (no. 496/2026) that constitutes—in the author's opinion—a case similar to what criminal lawyer Filippo Sgubbi, in his essay "Total Criminal Law. Punishing Without Law, Without Truth, Without Guilt. Twenty Theses," published by Il Mulino, defined as an "institutional distortion" of the law: "The judicial decision becomes—according to the author—a decision not only of a legislative nature, as a rule of conduct, but also of economic and social governance based on contingent expediency."
But the criticism ("criminal laws thus take on a new role. They are not punitive, but governing factors") didn't stop there. "The seizure of land, properties, a company or its branch, the seizure of an industrial plant, and the like directly impacts the rights of third parties. With such precautionary measures," Sgubbi continued, "the judiciary frequently examines the merits of business decisions and activities, censuring their correctness based on parameters that are largely discretionary by the public administration and sometimes completely arbitrary." One need only read decree no. 426, with which the Court rejected the appeal, to agree with Sgubba's complaints.
The Court considered the arguments on the plants insufficient
Questioning the shutdown order meant challenging the merits of the decision already made. Furthermore, the alleged irreversibility had not been proven with concrete evidence, nor had the comparative costs of upgrading and rebuilding the blast furnaces been provided. Regarding employment, the Court noted that the shutdown of the hot-works area was not an unforeseeable event, given that the citizens' judgment had been pending since 2021. In any case, the workers could have been employed in the necessary maintenance, upgrades, and replacement of the equipment.
Regarding public resources and decarbonization, the Court clarified that the cited public funding had already been spent for the previous administration, while decarbonization presupposed overcoming the current production system, which was deemed unsustainable. Finally, the Court recalled the balancing of interests. In accordance with Article 41, paragraph 2, of the Constitution and the case law of the Constitutional Court and the Court of Cassation, the health and environmental protection is paramount with respect to the exercise of economic initiative and business continuity.
This balancing it is debatable and does not correspond to what was established by the Constitutional Court in sentence no. 58/2018 in which the need for a balance between equally fundamental rights was clearly expressed: ''the balance must be conducted without allowing "the unlimited expansion of one of the rights, and would become a 'tyrant' with respect to other constitutionally recognised and protected legal situations, which constitute, as a whole, an expression of the dignity of the person" (judgment no. 85 of 2013). The balance must, therefore, respond to criteria of proportionality and reasonableness, in such a way as to allow neither the absolute prevalence of one of the values involved, nor the total sacrifice of any of them, so that a unitary, systemic and non-fragmented protection of all the constitutional interests involved is always guaranteed.
Judicial decisions are respected, once they are final. But criticism is not precluded. The trade unions have been guilty of political correctness and have never dared publicly challenge the open war waged by various courts, from Taranto to Milan, against the former Ilva steelworks. Likewise, they have never presented arguments that contradict the terrorist narratives peddled by radical environmentalist associations. Today, it is the workers who pay the price.
