The Italian Constitutional Court has ruled that a 2015 decree that allowed the continuation of the business of troubled Italian steelmaker due to its national strategic interest - despite its seizure by the judicial authorities - is unconstitutional.
The issue arose after the fatal accident in which an Ilva worker was killed in June 2015 in the blast furnace area of the Taranto plant. The blast furnace had been seized by the judicial authorities but a few days later the Italian government ordered the continuation of its activities, with the only condition that within thirty days Ilva would prepare an intervention plan containing "additional measures and activities, even of a temporary type".
The Constitutional Court considered the principle according to which, even in the presence of seizures by the judicial authority, the Italian government can intervene to allow the continuation of a company's activity due to strategic national interest, though only on condition that requirements of environmental, health and safety protection and the needs of employment continuity are taken into due consideration. Concerning the 2015 decree, the Constitutional Court judges established that the government privileged economic needs and sacrificed the protection of life, including the health and safety of workers.
The latest sentence "has no impact on the continuity of production", Ilva has stated. "The restitution of blast furnace No. 2 was obtained by Ilva in September 2015, not on the basis of the decree that was declared unlawful today, but on the basis of a decision by the Public Prosecutor who, in accepting an application filed by the company, returned the plant on condition of the fulfillment of certain safety regulations that were implemented later,". Ilva said in its statment. Ilva's extraordinary commissioner Enrico Laghi specified that "the rules of the decree therefore have represented only an alternative solution, which was not pursued, and, for this reason, there is nothing to fear for Ilva from the ruling of the Constitutional Court."