“We are confident that the negotiation can be concluded positively”. The words of Minister Stefano Patuanelli, after the meeting with the metalworkers' unions on ArcelorMittal Italia, now suggest that the Ilva crisis will be resolved with the State's entry into ArcelorMittal with Invitalia, which will share the corporate governance and in the end the weight of the public will be more relevant than what was prefigured at the beginning.
The Government therefore, despite the perplexities of the trade unions, now considers the finalization of the agreement with ArcelorMittal very probable by the end of the month as envisaged by the previous March agreement between the multinational and Ilva in extraordinary administration, which owns the plants. The new deal will be important because will sanction the official entry of the public into the capital of ArcelorMittal.
However, the engineering acronyms believe that we are still in a too generic, very uncertain phase, the opposite of what is needed given that November 30th is practically upon us and many things still need to be discussed. “The industrial plan remains too obscure – he commented for example Roberto Benaglia of the Fim Cisl -, as well as commitments on investment and employment. In such a delicate moment and after months of suspension and uncertainty like the one workers are experiencing, we cannot think that everything can be resolved with generic commitments between now and 2025".
It's still up to Domenico Arcuri, CEO of Invitalia and at the same time extraordinary commissioner for the Covid emergency, with the delicate task of distributing vaccines, to explain what the Ilva of the future will be like. Progress is currently expected productive recovery of the plants up to the threshold of 8 million tons per year (now it is between 3 and 4 million tons) with the use of entire workforce.
Today there are 10.700 group employees of which 8.200 in Taranto, but precisely in Taranto 3.300 are now in layoffs and on November 16, another 6 weeks of Covid cash start. Arcuri also declares that the five-year plan drawn up in March would be implemented in its substantial entirety, also from the point of view of a series of positive innovations in terms of the environment, quality of the offer and competitive capacity on the wider market.
