With the latest measures imposed by Taranto Public Prosecutor's Office the danger level has been exceeded in the dangerous tug-of-war that is taking place between the judiciary and the other institutions of the State (Government, Parliament and Constitutional Court) regarding the future of the Taranto iron and steel center and to that of the entire national steel industry. It is all too clear that the Taranto prosecutor's office is not at all interested in the reclamation and revitalization of the site and that, much less, it is concerned about the future of the Italian steel industry and that of the workers and entrepreneurs who work in that sector. Since the beginning of this affair, it has shown itself convinced of the fact that an environmental disaster of enormous proportions is underway in Taranto, that this disaster is caused by the steel mill and that of all the Rivas are responsible. For this reason, the iron and steel plant must be closed now and forever and the Rivas must first be expropriated and then, if the conditions exist, condemned. Full stop!
The seizure of the shares evidently no longer seemed sufficient for this purpose. It was also necessary to seize the plants, machinery, finished products (considered crimes, the devil's dung), financial assets and current accounts in order to be able to secure them for presumed damage (we don't know by whom and how?) amounting to the staggering figure of 8 and a half billion euros, the equivalent of the IMU and VAT maneuver put together. Naturally, all of this without there having been a public debate on environmental data, without someone being indicted, without a hearing and without a sentence. A judicial barbarism but also an economic crime, this is of immense magnitude, for which NOBODY, much less the prosecutors of Taranto, will ever have to answer.
The principle of the "non-liability of magistrates" has favored, in this case, very unresponsible behavior. Irresponsible in law and in fact, the Taranto magistrates continue undaunted on their way as well as Bouvard and Pécuchet, the heroes of the novel of the same name about human stupidity written more than a century ago by Flaubert, they plummet to their ineluctable ruin.
The government, the Parliament and the Constitutional Court Instead, they pointed to a different path. They imposed a reclamation plan on the company and the adaptation of the plants and the entire production cycle to the new and more stringent European standards and proceeded, with an extraordinary gesture which we hope will remain unique, to commissioner Ilva linking the investments (approximately 2 billion euro have already been committed) to the implementation of the reclamation at the end of which only the company will be returned to its rightful owners.
With this choice the Parliament proceeded to separate the judicial matter (collection of evidence, possible request for indictment, trial and third degree sentence and on which only the Public Prosecutor should concentrate) from that of the productive future of the Taranto plant and the Italian steel industry. Against these decisions of the executive and legislative powers, the Taranto prosecutor's office appealed to the Constitutional Court, which found it wrong. Since then, the Public Prosecutor's Office has carried out a series of initiatives, culminating most recently in the request for huge seizures, which can only be read as a maneuver aimed at evading the Court's sentence. He shouted (wrongly) at the lockout when Riva Acciai was forced to close the factory gates, but we should rather have talked about "expropriation" faced with requests for seizure that were useless and ineffective (in fact, the seizure of shares was enough) but lethal for companies and for those who work there.
To remedy this umpteenth initiative by the Taranto Public Prosecutor's Office, the Government, pending the appeal made by Riva steel group is accepted by the judge, he is forced to issue another decree. All of this confirms that the Italian legislation concerning companies and production is largely dictated by a prejudicial hostility towards companies and entrepreneurs. Daughter of that anti-industrial and anti-entrepreneurial culture that looks at business with hostility and distrust, it is a legislation that does not encourage but limits, conditioning it, free initiative. A culture and legislation that keep foreign entrepreneurs away and that it would therefore be time to change.
