Former Ilva site: companies ready to examine the Chigi dossier
The Meloni government – in particular Palazzo Chigi – is calling on Italian businesses to make an extraordinary effort. Italian businesses are not shying away – at the very least – from a thorough review of the new Ilva dossier. The government is paying very close attention to the matter, so much so that a further meeting between ministers was held yesterday in the early evening.
Today, the government is meeting with the trade unions. Tomorrow – probably in two rounds – the government will meet with companies interested in small parts of the former Ilva and, subsequently, with the leaders of the trade union federations and the more established firms, whom the Prime Minister’s Office is asking to assess the conditions for the formation of a national consortium. Those due to meet with the government tomorrow are expected to include the president of Viale dell’Astronomia, Emanuele Orsini; the president of Federmeccanica, Silvano Simone Bettini; the president of Federacciai, Antonio Gozzi (and the steelmakers’ incoming head, Alessandro Banzato).
Italian industrialists – now that the Milan judiciary has removed the ‘hot area’ from the table, putting an end to fears of suffering the same fate as the Riva family – are preparing for tomorrow’s meeting with a willingness – as the business leaders interviewed by *Il Sole 24 Ore* say in unison – to analyse the new operating conditions.
The first issue concerns the new call for tenders that Alfredo Mantovano, Under-Secretary to the Prime Minister’s Office, has announced for September, effectively clipping the wings – including through formal responses – from a regulatory and policy perspective of the Indian firm Jindal, which has been insisting in recent days that the old tender for the hot-rolling mill – which had been excluded from the scope of the project by the Milan judiciary – should not be considered obsolete. The second issue – involving an electric furnace and substantial rolling operations – concerns the supply of raw materials for rolling (slabs for Taranto and coils for Novi Ligure and Cornigliano), which are currently subject to increasing customs restrictions on their import from abroad. The third issue is that of public funds. Building the DRI plant requires one billion euros, initially held in a special-purpose vehicle controlled by Invitalia and now reduced to 800 million euros: there is a shortfall of 200 million, and moreover, the remaining sum has been reallocated, under the latest PNRR decree, to general decarbonisation projects. The entrepreneurs are also well aware that there are 570 million euros’ worth of development contracts. But they also know that these are currently tied to hot-area operations (such as blast furnace 5) that will no longer exist. Furthermore, they are aware that the structure of development contracts usually involves 60 per cent private funding and 40 per cent public funding.
Meanwhile, yesterday saw an eight-hour strike called by the trade unions Fim-Cisl, Fiom-Cgil, Uilm and Usb. Participation was not limited to steelworks employees, but also involved – to a significant extent – workers from subcontracting firms and related industries. During the strike, protesters blocked State Road 7, which runs past the Taranto steelworks, for an hour. And today the trade unions are heading to the Ministry of Economic Development (MIMIT) for the first of four meetings that Minister Adolfo Urso has convened regarding the steelworks. At the meeting, the trade unions announce, ‘we will put forward proposals for extraordinary measures to safeguard jobs and wages, alongside the extension of social security benefits relating to asbestos exposure, early retirement, arduous work and early retirement incentives’.
