Minister Carlo Calenda will have it for the entire month of May. Indeed on his table the three hottest dossiers they will have to find definitive solutions or at least offer clear directions on the future of important assets for the country's economy and employment. Let's start with the one now in the pipeline.
Taranto steel will finally find an industrial solution that promises stability, environmental friendliness and qualitative development of the entire site. The competing consortiums have both played persuasive and winning cards even if the choice, we are convinced, will take into account overall factors of a strategic nature that are stronger and more convincing than the economic offers themselves. In recent weeks Giovanni Arvedi, the industrial partner of the Indian Jindal, communicated with a page in the Corriere and other newspapers that he had sold as many as 5 coil production lines to the Chinese: patent lines of the Cremona company, consolidated in the technology of electric oven and time-tested. If the same technology is also installed in Taranto, steel production would not suffer from the downsizing of the integral cycle area and would give all the guarantees on the pollution, energy and environmental saving fronts that the area awaits. For this reason, the Taranto steel dossier could be successfully closed.
Less optimism on the steel front in Piombino. In recent weeks the Minister had overshadowed the return to the commissioner for the non-fulfilment of the contract of the Algerian property which took over the years of productive and financial decline both of the public managements and of the Lucchini family in alliance with the Russian Mordashov. On the other hand, Issad Rebrab complains that he has not been able to carry out all the investment commitments for a sort of "conspiracy" which at home would have frozen (or paid with a dropper) the sums envisaged for the Tuscan operation even if the other assets in Algiers commercial, financial and industrial logistics continue to operate successfully. The brake on capital exports imposed by Bouteflika's government should be read as a retaliation for the deafness demonstrated by the tycoon Rebrab towards the (obsolete) iron and steel plants of Oran who have been looking for partners for their restructuring for years. No one has come close despite a market that continues to import steel massively and a country that offers energy sources in abundance and at low cost. That the impasse invoked by AFERPI is an objective fact and not unfounded is demonstrated by the caution with which the Ministry (after the final words) has put in place. The Badinelli & Colosio law firm in Brescia, which has been looking after the interests of the Algerian group for years, is constantly probing with the necessary discretion for every possible solution that could lead to an unblocking of the situation. They are looking for industrial partners, possibly from the sector, to support AFERPI, capable of supplying the steel necessary to keep the rolling lines and the rail lines in production while waiting for their own production in Piombino. The names contacted are always those of Antonio Gozzi's Duferco and Giuseppe Pasini's Feralpi. But there are also those who swear they saw the Algerians in Padua where the Acciaierie Venete have their headquarters.
The third file is certainly the most delicate: Alitalia. The airline needs surgical treatment and whoever will have to set up the operating room will have to have a free and determined hand not only in defining an industrial plan but also in the very delicate decision to initiate the directors' liability actions. Psychologically not an easy step for a minister whose mentor was Luca di Montezemolo first in Ferrari, then in Confindustria, then in the large logistics center in Campania and, finally, in the electoral and political push alongside Mario Monti. Advice to the diligent and good Minister. Let those who lived through them tell you about the wreck of the SEA and Frankfurt Airports agreement, the disastrous mediation to impose two Hubs (Malpensa and Rome), the blindness demonstrated by trusting the revenue from the Linate-Rome flights. Stories outdated but to be known this history is the master of life.
