By placing Ilva under commissioner, the government has taken a very narrow path which is not without risks but which, perhaps, can allow us to achieve the three objectives that the Monti government had also set itself, namely: the safeguarding of the national iron and steel cycle, the defense of the occupation and the start of the reclamation of the area and the plants. Minister Zanonato clearly stated that the Taranto site can only be reclaimed if it continues to produce.
If, on the other hand, it were to stop producing, as the investigating judge Dr. Todisco wanted and still wants, the Taranto site would be ineluctably destined to become the largest abandoned industrial area in Italy. A Bagnoli to the nth degree, condemned to scrapping and degradation. An environmental, as well as social and economic disaster, with no possible remedy!
The appointment of the government commissioner puts an end, at least hopefully, to the claim of the investigating magistrates to replace the administrators in the management of the production cycle and the government authorities in the reclamation operations. The investigating Judiciary (which only in Italy is treated as judges) is responsible for acquiring the detailed evidence of the alleged defaults of the directors in order to be able to refer them to trial if they are deemed appropriate.
But the decision whether to sanction the faults with fines or prison sentences can only be taken by a judge who is actually "third party" and at the end of an in-depth contradictory and a debate which, up to now, have been lacking. This happens in all civilized countries and unfortunately this does not happen in Italy. The anticipation of the fines (with the unspeakable decision to place a good 8 billion euros under precautionary seizure) and that of the penalties (with the extension of house arrest for the Rivas beyond the limit of reasonable and legal decency) do not belong to the State by right but to the judicial barbarism in which, unfortunately, we have fallen.
Taking ownership and taking responsibility for managing the plant to ensure that clean-up and production run in parallel is an extreme act that only the government and Parliament can take. But precisely because it is extreme, this act must have an exceptional character and a limited duration over time. Its purpose cannot be to expropriate the legitimate owners but to guarantee the continuity of a production which is vital for the national economy and, at the same time, to protect the health of citizens by implementing those measures which the intervention of the investigating magistracy has, as stated by former minister Clini, been seriously delayed.
On the merits of the provision, and precisely to avoid dangerous misunderstandings, the action of the commissioner and that of the government should focus on three essential points. The first is that of the resumption of production activity in Taranto. The plant can only generate the resources necessary to carry out the reclamation and investments if it is fully productive. Production efficiency is the condition for Ilva to truly recover from both an environmental and an economic and market point of view. But efficiency is only possible if the Commissioner is able to regain the trust of the cadres and technicians who, out of fear of the judiciary, have resigned en masse.
The second point on which we will have to concentrate is that of reclamation and bringing the systems up to standard. This process will have to take place within the timescales established by the new European regulations which will come into force on 1 January 2014, neither before nor after. The hot area will have to be environmentally friendly, as well as the problem of storage of raw materials will have to be solved. But, even in this case, everything will have to be done taking into account the time needed to do it and the objective limits that such interventions have. To be completely clear: Taranto supplies all the other Italian steel plants, it is the only hot area that the country has and it is vital for the survival of the national steel industry. The same future of Taranto depends on its hot area. It can be "environmentalised" by complying with European and international standards or it can be closed.
The investigating judiciary wants to close it because it considers it, on the basis of data that has never been the subject of a real contradictory, as the source of all the evils of the city, like the crime itself. And it considers its products (the coils) as corpus delicti. Instead, the government believes that hot production must continue, that it is possible to keep this activity within the limits set by the Hague by applying the appropriate measures and that, therefore, the Commissioner must be able to move in this direction without the investigating judiciary hindering it. submissively or overtly arbitrary, the action. These are two diametrically opposed perspectives between which one must choose.
If the choice was not that of the production continuity of the hot area or if doubts remained in this regard then it would be preferable to state it clearly immediately, leaving the decision to the shareholders, which belongs to them and only to them, to close the Taranto plant and to search for another area outside Italy (in Libya or Albania for example) in which to create a new iron and steel center in order to continue supplying the country with coils or to definitively exit the sector. Last but not least, the government and Parliament must assume, in an absolutely clear and non-revocable way, the commitment to return the company to its legitimate owners after a reasonable period of time (18/30 months). If this were not the case or if even the shadow of a doubt remained in this regard, Italy's credibility for both foreign and domestic investors would collapse. Also for this reason it would have been preferable for the decree to be more delimited and detailed. In other words, that it was more similar to the Anglo-Saxon “blind trust” than to the commissioner envisaged by the so-called Marzano law.
The vague reference to strategic sectors and the failure to comply with the environmental laws as reasons in themselves sufficient to place a company in receivership opens the door to possible arbitrators. Today the rule is tailor-made for Ilva but tomorrow it could be applied to other companies on the basis of contingent social and political reasons that could irreparably conflict with the right to property which is, and remains, the basis of every free economy of the market, as well as of democracy and freedom as such. This is a limit that cannot and must not be crossed. Never and for no reason.
