Still a month to carry on the negotiations between the commissioners of the former Ilva and ArcelorMittal. This is what the two sides agreed, with an agreement found in extremis on the day of the second and decisive appointment before the judge to discuss the urgent precautionary appeal filed by the Taranto steel mill in November to reply to the summons filed by ArcelorMittal against the commissioners and to oppose ArcelorMittal's decision to withdraw from the contract signed in September 2018.
While the hearing has been postponed to January 7, Ilva in extraordinary administration and the French-Indian steel giant have in the meantime drawn up a memorandum of understanding which allows gain time until the end of January, through a 3-point pre-agreement. The 3 points concern: the "green" steel, ie the partial abandonment of the current integral cycle based on the transformation of minerals and the use of both the pre-reduced iron in the blast furnaces and two electric furnaces; investments to be carried out, with the State ready to reach one billion, also through subsidiaries; the workforce, with the usual knot of redundancies.
It is precisely the issue of redundancies that has not yet been tackled head-on, because on the one hand there are 4.700 redundancies by 2023, of which 2.900 in 2020, and then extraordinary layoffs for 3.500 in Taranto due to the stop Afo2; and on the other the numbers of the government, which is not willing to go beyond 1.800 of Ilva in extraordinary administration, considering that the plan in 2023 aims at a production of 8 million tons of steel. The whole game will be played on this aspect in the first weeks of the new year.
