We must acknowledge the Ministers Clini and Passera and to the government as a whole for having managed the Ilva affair in Taranto with wisdom and a sense of proportion but also with the necessary firmness. The initiative of the Taranto magistrate to decree the closure of the hot area (i.e. the beating heart of the plant) and the subsequent refusal (even before the sentence was published) to accept the proposal of the review judge to appoint the President of Ilva, Prefect Ferrante, as one of the three commissioners in charge of bringing the plants up to standard, had made them fear the worst. Now it would seem that a way out of this deadly mess has been found, as long as the magistrate does not overturn everything that would make the government's recourse to the Consulta unavoidable with the concrete risk, however, that, in the meantime, the plant will really have to close forever.
Now Ilva will have to speed up the time required to bring the plants up to standard applying to the letter the provisions that the competent government authority, which is the Ministry of the Environment, will define by September 30, thus anticipating to 2013 those technological innovations that for other European steel plants will become mandatory only in 2016.
Standardization of the systems can only be realized if the systems work e Does this make sense invest significant financial resources (160 million euros which add up to the one billion and 100 million already spent) only if this investment is aimed at the continuation of the productive activity. If not and if the objective of the recovery of production was not also shared by the Judiciary then it would be preferable to declare the closure as of now and start the procedures envisaged for plants of this nature. Without the hot area, the Taranto plant would make no economic sense. It would not serve the Riva group or the country or even Taranto.
Instead, we need to focus on innovation, as requested by the government and as Ilva says it wants to do, e it is necessary to immediately start the compliance of the systems and the reclamation of the pertinent areas. Equally important is that the reclamation plan of Taranto is defined and that an effective policy of diversification of the Taranto production base is implemented. This undertaking is anything but easy, but which is the real challenge of the future and which represents the decisive test of the government capacity of the institutions and of the social and political forces.
Everyone will have to do their part and assume their responsibilities in respect of each other's competences. The confusion that has arisen between the reclamation, which is the task of the institutions and political and social forces, and the prosecution of crimes, which is instead the responsibility of the judiciary, has done significant damage and created a dangerous institutional short circuit. It should be avoided that this has repercussions in Taranto and elsewhere.
In reality, the environmental crisis in Taranto (like that of Marghera or Porto Torres) is the product of a long period of industrial development which has left us a legacy of problems which must be faced and resolved with a serious effort which is both cultural, financial and productive. Among those who today are calling for the closure of Ilva there were also those who at the time asked for it to double in order to be able to reabsorb a part of the construction workers who, once the construction of the plant was finished, had found themselves unemployed. And in all likelihood there were also those administrators who in his time allowed residential neighborhoods to arise close to the steelworks. In this story there are no innocents and there are no shortcuts. There is a challenge that needs to be taken up and the way it is tackled will show whether Italy is a country capable of managing and solving complex problems or not.
