The decision of the Taranto magistrate to close the steel mill and to place the Riva family under house arrest confirms the national short-circuit. We are a country in which the institutions no longer seem to be able to manage complex problems in a coordinated manner. Everyone moves on their own, confusing autonomy (sacrosanct) with self-referentiality. Let it be said without offense to anyone but more than Guicciardini's "particular" this conduct seems to be inspired by Totò's "regardless". It is said that the order has been very painful but, evidently, not suffered to the point of taking charge of the catastrophic consequences that it can cause.
The Taranto steel plant, the largest in Europe, was born from a brilliant intuition of Oscar Senigalia and represented an industrial bet that Italy won. Doubling it was perhaps a gamble, but in all these years the Taranto plant has supplied Italian industry with the low-cost steel it needed to develop: in short, it was one of the engines of the economic miracle.
The steel plant was owned by the State and was managed with criteria that have nothing to do with the "cynical pursuit of profit" mentioned in the ordinance. IRI was not a "robber baron". In 93 Taranto was saved from the threat of closure by the Andreatta-Van Miert agreement which allowed IRI to cover Ilva's losses on condition of privatizing it.
The company was restructured (and there were many redundancies) and sold, with a more than transparent operation, to the Riva group which has shown that it knows how to manage it successfully. In all these years, first Iri and then Riva, have invested huge resources to reduce the plant's environmental impact and have done so in close contact with the trade unions and institutions. Of course, a steel centre, no matter how much it is done and how long it will continue to do, will always remain a steel centre, with an important environmental impact. Reducing this impact is possible and must be done with the innovation of production processes, with technologies that improve workplace safety and reduce pollution, with the search for new materials and with continuous action aimed at diversifying the Taranto production base. But this process takes time, requires huge public and private resources and requires a concerted effort by the administrations involved. The economist Viesti is right when he says that this cannot be a task of the Judiciary. The judges must obviously report the violation of precise rules, when this violation occurs, and must indicate the necessary (and possible) measures to remedy it. However, they should refrain from judgments on the blind and relentless pursuit of profit because this is not the root of the pollution problem in Taranto as elsewhere.
Taranto is not the product of capitalist greed but of a historical phase of industrial development that has had similar characteristics and consequences all over the world. Overcoming this phase cannot take place by judicial means but through a cultural and productive process that stimulates innovation , research, and technology. A process that makes reconversion and environmental sustainability factors of development and growth and not of recession and impoverishment of the territories. In Italy there is not only Taranto. There is Porto Marghera, Porto Torres and Syracuse. There are the minor metallurgical areas and there is still Bagnoli, the eternal unfinished. They are enormous problems to solve which will take years and huge financial resources that we do not have (the 3 billion euros allocated at the time to finance some of these projects were requisitioned by Tremonti and disappeared in the abyss of the redundancy fund by way of derogation). We would also need a common vision of the country's productive future and a synergy between the institutions and between the citizens and the institutions which today, unfortunately, are lacking. Sooner or later we could even find the money, but not political and cultural cohesion. We have to build that and the order of the judges of Taranto, however painful, does not help us take a step forward in this direction.
