Not even a consummate, cynical and shrewd courtier like Polonius would be able to find a thread of logic in that schizophrenic crisis that he is bringing about – with the exit from the former Ilva group of ArcelorMittal – damage of incalculable dimensions to the Italian economy, with the desertification of a vast area of the South, because it will be forced to close its doors, together with the largest European steel mill, even the related sector. Tens of thousands of jobs are at risk.
To remedy this disaster announced (since June ArcelorMittal has announced that without the penal shield would have gone away) the government – which due to its internal contradictions has changed the rules and guarantees on this aspect – is trying to hide a huge straw tail with an appeal to patriotism and national unity against the foreigner who, according to the veline of Palazzo Chigi, is making use of a trivial pretext (such as wanting to protect himself from a persecutory attitude by the criminal justice) to leave, demonstrating thus having plotted to win the tender for the sole purpose of killing, like a lame horse, a weighty competitor on the international steel market. We are always there: at conspiracies of strong powers and multinationals.
That's when you run to ask aid to the judiciary, with the hope that the clinking of the handcuffs will induce the perjured Indians to back down. But the idea that a foreign company, such as ArcelorMittal or any other company – large or small – could be forced by a ruling to invest in a business gone bad and manage a bankruptcy operation in hostile territory is nonsense. Just as forced labor is not foreseen, so there is no compulsory entrepreneurial activity. Then, passages that have decided to deal with the affair, still with an investigation against unknown persons, the Milan prosecutor's office that of theAffair was invested by the company itself for the purpose of verifying the faculty and legitimacy of the termination of the contract.
But that the extraordinary commissioners - the same ones who had demanded the application of impunity for their protection - present a complaint to the court of Taranto, denouncing, against ArcelorMittal, "facts and conduct inherent in the contractual relationship with ArcelorMittal, harmful to the national economy”, has the flavor of a tragic hoax. Repeated a few days later in Milan. Certainly, the company must not hand over a dead establishment, with the blast furnaces turned off. And she pledged not to with a view to a judicial decision. But what was the content of the Taranto court order that forced ArcelorMittal to abandon the operation?
We recover the press release in which the company explained its reasons. "The provisions issued by the Criminal Court of Taranto oblige the extraordinary commissioners of Ilva to complete certain provisions by 13 December 2019 - a deadline that the commissioners themselves deemed impossible to respect - under penalty of shutting down blast furnace number 2".
Now, again according to the company, the aforementioned provisions "should reasonably and prudentially also be applied to the other two blast furnaces of the Taranto plant". But, this shutdown "would make it impossible for the Company to implement its industrial plan, manage the Taranto plant and, in general, execute the Contract".
In short, where is the problem? ArcelorMittal doesn't say this explicitly, but the penal shield, in its exceptional nature, was considered a necessary measure, in a reality in which the judiciary seems to make use - from 2012 to today - of its powers to wage a ruthless war on the iron and steel plant of Taranto, to the point of effectively preventing those required recovery processes, conditioning them to methods and times incompatible with the characteristics of the production processes of the iron and steel industry and with a minimum cost-effectiveness of the steel mill (which currently loses two million a day).
It is difficult to blame an investor who is asked to do the impossible, expecting him to do it, if he does not want to run into the constraints (and shackles) of justice. To better explain the catch of the blast furnaces Marco Leonardi, with regard to the seizure by the judiciary of blast furnace number 2, recounted the facts: "After the tragic death of a worker in 2015, the furnace was seized and for the release judicial custodian has imposed its complete automation. The Mittals argue that, if this is the case, they will have to proceed with the same innovations also in blast furnaces 1 and 4 (which are completely similar to n.2), something very complicated to achieve in the short term and which prevents the production of 6 million tons envisaged in the industrial plan (to be automated, the blast furnace will have to remain idle for a period)”. And in any case, there is not technically the possibility of automating the blast furnace in question by the established date.
Therefore, the management of the former Ilva should shut down and at the same time leave the most important blast furnace in operation in the plant. In essence, to answer criminally for both the continuity of operation and the closure of the plants. To fulfill their duty, the Milan prosecutors should investigate their colleagues in Taranto, who should send the guarantee notices, for damage to the national economy, to themselves, maybe "post stop".
Meanwhile, belated reasoning of willingness to recognize the steel market crisis – and to bear the consequences – comes from unions, whose leaders were received by the Head of State. But difficulties also exist within them. They are denounced by the inaction of the Taranto and Apulian territorial structures, which have entrusted the burden of defending their jobs together with a strategic part of the economy of the South and of Italy to the workers of the plant alone.
