With the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union, another page opens in the long and tormented story of the former Ilva steelworks in Taranto.
The ruling of the Luxembourg court establishes that “in case of serious and relevant dangers to the integrity of the environment and human health, the operation of the installation must be suspended”. A victory for those who have always maintained that the former Ilva bubo had to be eradicated, a further defeat for those who instead defended employment and the industrial future of our country.
The only certainty is that the sentence adds a further element of confusion to an already very tangled situation. Last February, Minister Adolfo Urso had admitted Acciaierie d’Italia to the extraordinary administration procedure by decree, appointing a commissioner for the relaunch of the plant, returning to the country “what is the fruit of the work, of the sacrifice of entire generations”.
The defense of the industrial plant is certainly an acceptable choice. Its closure would produce a drastic deindustrialization of the area, with no alternatives.
The Bagnoli affair must teach us something. Beautiful environmentalist souls, more interested in the integrity of the landscapes than in the human dignity of work, became unwitting accomplices of jealousies of competitors within the European Community and of greedy speculators.
The most workerist of the communists, Antonio Bassolino, was converted like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus and began to dream of the great development that Bagnoli, freed from the monster, would bring to the city of Naples. Well, more than thirty years have passed since the dismantling of what was the largest and most modern steelworks in Europe, and the scene is a desert. Where are the promised big hotels, the crowds of tourists, where is the beach? There is nothing. Of course, the problem of red soot that annoyed the sensitive bourgeoisie of Vomero was resolved in Naples, but down in the valley, in deindustrialized Bagnoli, there was only speculation, corruption and the shame of an incapable political class.
Bagnoli teaches a lot and Taranto must not suffer the same fate. There is a possibility of reconciling production, employment and the sacrosanct health of citizens: reconverting plants and producing quality steel. The Swedish experience can be imitated. Of course, Sweden does not produce our quantities (4.3 million tonnes in 2023 compared to Italian production of 21 million tonnes), but it has H2 Green Steel plants, powered by hydrogen and not fossil fuels (coke). This technology can be applied, as demonstrated by the experimental results, to large-scale plants, with significant production volumes. There is no other solution than to renovate the large Taranto plant in an ecological sense (with H2 Green Steel technology or other), without losing production and employment volumes. The alternative is the nothingness that we see in Bagnoli today.
