What happens with the ILVA, in order

The decision of the Indo-French company ArcelorMittal to leave the ILVA steelworks in Taranto, announced yesterday, was actually expected by the government, so that the Minister of Economic Development, Stefano Patuanelli of the 5 Star Movement, stayed in Italy last week instead to follow his political leader Luigi Di Maio on a diplomatic trip to China. But even if the decision to cancel the lease and purchase contract was not a surprise, how this story will end and whose responsibility remains unclear even today, while the government, the opposition and the same parties within the majority will they blame the sins for what happened.

There will be greater clarity probably after Wednesday, when the company executives will meet in Rome with the government to decide the fate of Europe's largest steel mill, which employs 10,700 workers, of which 8,200 in the Taranto plant (the others in those of Novi Ligure and Cornigliano) and which produces steel for 24 billion euros each year. In the meantime here is what we know, put in order.

Why does ArcelorMittal say he wants to leave?
The official reason is that the Parliament has canceled the "criminal shield" enjoyed by the administrators of ILVA in realizing the "environmental plan" with which the establishment should be made compliant with the laws on pollution. In essence, ILVA has for years been in an irregular situation and pollutes much more than what is allowed. Due to its economic and occupational importance (10 thousand workers, about twice as high in the supply chain) it has long been decided not to interrupt its activity, but to keep it in operation while the ArcelorMittal group, which intended to buy it, tried to put it in norm.

The problem is that in doing so the current and new directors of the company are potentially committed to committing environmental crimes, based on the current conditions of the plant resulting from the previous management. For this reason, since 2015, the government commissioners and subsequent buyers have been protected with a criminal shield that prevents prosecution for the non-standard pollution that will be produced at least until the reclamation plan is completed, provided it is completed according to the times established by the agreements.

The company also complains about the provisions of the Court of Taranto that risk forcing the extinguishing of the blast furnace 2 of the steel plant, which needs special interventions after the death of a worker in 2015. However, many argue that these reasons do not explain themselves ArcelorMittal's decision: the steel market has been in crisis over the past year and ArcelorMittal would therefore like to get rid of an investment that it no longer considers profitable.

Who has decided to remove the penal shield?
Whether an excuse or not, the whole affair of these days revolves around the penal shield, removed from a Senate vote last week after the insistence of 15 Senators of the 5 Star Movement, headed by former minister for South Barbara Lezzi (of Pugliese origin, elected last year with the promise to close the ILVA). The penal shield was first introduced in 2015, during the Renzi government, when it was decided to keep the ILVA in operation and to entrust it to commissioners looking for a buyer. The decree approved in January 2015 excluded criminal liability "in relation to the conduct carried out in implementation of the Environmental Plan" by the commissioner or future "tenants or buyers", based on the idea that otherwise it would have been impossible to find someone willing to invest in the necessary rehabilitation of the plant.

At the time there were still no tenants or buyers on the horizon, and for about three years ILVA continued its activity under the commissioner management. Between 2017 and 2018, during the Gentiloni government and during the management of the Minister of Economic Development Carlo Calenda, the procedures to sell the plant to private individuals began, which were then completed on November 1st 2018 with the entry of ArcelorMittal into the plant. In the meantime, however, governments and a parliamentary majority had changed. Instead of the PD, in favor of the sale of the plant and the continuation of production, the 5 Star Movement had arrived, which has always supported the need to close the ILVA or at least to completely revolutionize the production methods.

Despite the promises made during the electoral campaign, the Movement had to quickly change its mind and accept that by now the plant was destined to remain open (Di Maio said that it was the fault of the previous government that he had committed a "perfect crime" by approving a decree for ILVA "Illegitimate" but – he said – "impossible" to revoke). Despite the surrender of Di Maio a group of Apulian senators, headed by the minister for South Barbara Lezzi, decided to continue his battle (Lezzi and his allies had already had to swallow the approval of the Apulian pipeline TAP and did not want to sell on another front). After weeks of work the group managed to obtain an important victory last April, when it persuaded both Di Maio and the head of the League Matteo Salvini to eliminate the criminal shield with a new norm inserted in the so-called "decree of growth".

The new provision limited the exoneration of responsibility for the implementation of the environmental plan and excluded "impunity for violation of the provisions protecting health and safety at work". In short, the shield was weakened and the company managers began to fear to go to court. After weeks of new negotiations and discussions, however, there was a new backtrack: the shield was partially restored through a new decree, the so-called "save enterprise" approved by the Council of Ministers in August. The decree established greater protection for managers for the duration of the work on the environmental plan: a sort of compromise, the newspapers wrote, to allow the company to continue the rehabilitation work and the 5 Star Movement to save face.

But "saving face", evidently, was not enough for the Apulian senators of the 5 Star Movement. Since August, new negotiations have begun within the majority and, with the arrival of the second Conte government, the 15 senators managed to obtain a positive opinion on the amendment that aims to eliminate the criminal shield from the "save companies" decree during the its conversion into law (meaning that their position has become the position of the entire government). The only resistance made by those in favor of the ILVA in the government is the request for an agenda (a non-binding declaration voted by the Parliament) in which they are asked to return to the matter. The elimination of the amendment therefore arrived last week, October 31, with the favorable vote of Movimento 5 Stelle, PD and Italia Viva.

Who's with whom in this story?
The most opposed of all to the penal shield and more generally to the continuation of the activities in the ILVA are the 15 senators from Puglia of the Movement 5 Stars, but almost the whole party is lined up on positions critical towards this norm. With a program that provided for the closure of ILVA or its decarbonisation, at the last political elections the 5 Star Movement collected 47 percent of the votes in Taranto and at the European elections last May, while losing 20 points, it remained the first started with 27 percent of the votes.

The president of Puglia, Michele Emiliano, also thinks so, accusing ArcelorMittal of using the criminal shield as an excuse to justify a decision taken for economic reasons (his opinion has always been that Taranto would have been much better if ILVA did not had ever been opened). The PD and Italia Viva are instead in the most complicated situation, since they have always supported the need for ILVA to continue its production, but last week they voted with the senators of the 5 Star Movement the rule that eliminates the penal shield. Today, they also accuse ArcelorMittal of using the criminal shield as an excuse, and many members of both parties are asking the government to restore the shield so as to remove an excuse from society.

Italia Viva, then, has a particular position. Its leader Matteo Renzi, write Republic is The print, would have an alternative solution ready if ArcelorMittal were to be able to disengage: the return of the consortium that lost the race with ArcelorMittal last fall and in which his friend Marco Carrai was also involved.

Finally, even the Lega has made a discreet forward-and-back on the subject: first favoring the cancellation of the penal shield and then, with the August decree, partially restoring it. Today Salvini does not seem to have yet taken a definitive position on the subject of the criminal shield, but he said that if ILVA should close the government should resign.

Are there other reasons to leave ILVA?
Many believe they do. ArcelorMittal would be looking for an excuse to withdraw from an investment that turned out to be less profitable than expected. Currently the newspapers write that the steelworks loses between one and two million euros a day, mainly due to an international steel market that has worsened since the end of 2018, immediately after the entry of ArcelorMittal into ILVA. Moreover, as the company wrote in its statement yesterday, these problems must be added those of the blast furnace 2, which according to the magistrates is not safe and could need heavy investments to be made safe. In the meantime the risk is having to switch it off, thus causing the company a double damage.

A meeting with the government to discuss the matter is scheduled for Wednesday. According to many members of the majority, at that point ArcelorMittal will put its true demands on the table: they could go from a discount on the next installment that the company has to pay (1.5 billion euros out of a total of about 4, between rents, investments and environmental plan) to allow employees to halve, dismissing 5,000 workers.