Former Ilva, the tender for the sale will change. We are moving towards an extraordinary plan

The tender to sell the property will be redoneex Ilvato a new private investor after the two tenders launched in July 2024 and August 2025. It will be redone because with the decree of theCourt of Appeal of Milanwhich established the closure of the hot area in Taranto in 90 days, since it pollutes and is harmful to health and the environment with fine dust and asbestos, the same hot area now has a sealed fate. Nor is it technically possible, secondSteel mills of Italyremove the asbestos still present in the Taranto steelworks within 3 months as established by the Milan judges.

But the fact that the hot area no longer has prospects cannot mean that the industry demobilizes in Taranto, generating thousands of redundancies and also heavy repercussions in the other sites: Genoa, Novi Ligure and Racconigi. This, in summary, the conclusion of today’s summit at Palazzo Chigi on the former Ilva, which lasted about three and a half hours, in the presence of the undersecretary to the presidency, Mantovano, the ministers Giorgetti, Urso and Calderone, the commissioners of Ilva and Acciaierie d’Italia and the unions Fim, Fiom, Uilm, Usb and Ugl.

The way out identified today to the demobilization and closure of the hot area is calledextraordinary plan. At the moment, however, it is just a name. The contents are hypothesized, new tender notice, support tools for workers including social safety nets, new investments in the Taranto area, but in practice they do not exist. Li will begin to identify and put together a technical table which will hold its first meeting on Tuesday at Mimit, with ministries, unions and local authorities present. While waiting for this plan to take shape, no initiating action to shut down the hot area will be carried out. There are 90 days before the stop decreed by the judges, the unions said at the summit, so let’s all take it up to put alternatives and solutions in place.

We start from this point: if the hot area in Taranto will no longer exist, it is clear that the number of redundancies will increase and go beyond those already feared with the advent of electric ovens in place of blast furnaces. Hence, therefore, the need for an extraordinary plan of alternative investments capable of absorbing excess manpower, of tools capable of protecting it socially in the meantime, but also of going from point to point with the announcement of the sale of the former Ilva.

Sale of the former Ilva

And it is no coincidence that there was no mention of the Indian group’s offerJindalwhich was also in an advanced position for the acquisition of the group, nor of the proposal relaunched by the American fundFlacksthrough the new company Flacksider. And it wasn’t done because if until yesterday it seemed possible to entrust the former Ilva to Jindal, today it is decidedly less so given that the tender put both the hot and cold areas on the market. But the summit didn’t even talk about the possibility of challenging the Court of Appeal’s decree. It is an eventuality to be studied and sources close to AdI say that no decision has been made in this regard.

The extraordinary plan

About theextraordinary planurged in the meeting and then shared by the Government, Undersecretary Mantovano states that “so that it does not remain a slogan, but is translated into a concrete project, it is necessary to clearly define the prerequisites, starting from an in-depth technical evaluation of the repercussions of the decree of the Court of Appeal of Milan. It is also necessary to verify the possibility of involving further investors, starting from the Italian ones, and jointly analyze all the further investment hypotheses regarding Taranto, as well as the resources available to support such interventions. This also with a view to guaranteeing an employment future for those who, as a consequence of the situation that has arisen, should lose their jobs”.

The position of the unions

I unionsIn the meantime, they have called an 8-hour strike in the former Ilva in the near future, but they support the need for an extraordinary plan. Davide Sperti of Uilm, asks for “a single decree that takes care of the workers, who are those who have paid the highest price, and of the city”. According to Ferdinando Uliano of Fim Cisl, “preventing the closure of hot areas means the need to find solutions to build alternatives. We must take the time to find useful solutions”. And Michele De Palma of Fiom Cgil claims that “there is a month to have those elements of guarantee that serve to safeguard the steel industry, employment and people’s wages”, while the USB relaunches thenationalizationwhich, he underlines, “serves to take control of industrial decisions, plan environmental interventions, guarantee investments, defend national steel production and protect employment”.