A ruling by the Court of Cassation alone will not be enough to change Ilva’s fate

Tomorrow, the Joint Divisions of the Court of Cassation will decide whether to uphold the ruling of the Milan Court of Appeal, which ordered the shutdown of Ilva’s last remaining blast furnace, or to allow operations in the hot area to continue. The Attorney General’s Office favours the latter option, having submitted a legal opinion stating that the Milan court failed to demonstrate the existence of a concrete and present danger to the Ionian community. Even if the Court of Cassation were to allow the blast furnaces to operate, it is by no means certain that they would restart. Only AFO2 was still in operation, whilst AFO4, the battery furnaces and the coking plant had been shut down since December 2025. And with just one blast furnace, and not even two million tonnes of steel per year, Ilva is not financially viable. The European Commission has stated that no further state aid can be granted to Ilva. Under the latest decree, the number of workers on short-time working has risen to 9,622 direct employees and 4,500 external staff, at a cost of 138 million up to 30 June. However, it is widely expected that whichever government comes to power after the elections will renew the measure. Giorgia Meloni has stated that since the start of its term, this government has allocated 5 billion to Ilva. And no one has asked in detail where this 5 billion has gone or what it was spent on. It is difficult to understand, given the comatose state of the plants. Not even the government seems to believe in it any more: the latest decree allocates 100 hectares of land within the Ilva site to a hypothetical reindustrialisation scheme – a sign that there will be nothing left of Ilva.

All sorts of things happened in Taranto last week. For five days, the trade unions prevented tankers from leaving the Eni refinery, leaving petrol stations empty. The protest ended after a meeting in Bari between the trade unions and President Decaro. All the group leaders on the regional council, the governor, the mayor of Taranto and the trade unionists signed an agreement calling for Ilva to run on green hydrogen. The proposal has been described as impractical. Similar concerns surround the broader decarbonisation agenda. How much green hydrogen would be required to power four electric furnaces and two DRI plants? What would be the source of supply? What would be the cost? And even if the facility were gas-powered, who would foot the bill? Perhaps most crucially, how long would the transition take? The document refers to a "gradual" process. In the meantime, what are the employees expected to do—remain on unemployment benefits and then return to work in ten years’ time?

There has been talk of electric furnaces for ten years, but no one has ever built them. Not even in Piombino, where just one is needed. Today it has become even more difficult due to rising raw material costs, conflicts, the steel surplus and, above all, the shut-down blast furnaces, which no longer guarantee profits to reinvest or the gas that used to power the on-site power stations. In short, with the old blast furnaces shut down, it is even more impossible to build the new electric furnaces. All this, incidentally, is being calculated without the owner’s input. Ilva is up for sale and the tender closes on 8 November. At present, neither of the two bids matches the one put forward by the PD and the trade unions: Jindal would bring pre-reduced steel from India, whilst the Italian consortium is only interested in the hot end.

Paradoxically, all these issues are clearer to those on the front line of the closure campaign than to politicians and trade unions. On Saturday in Taranto, more than ten thousand people took to the streets to say ‘no’ to the factory, no ifs, no buts. “Talking about green hydrogen, which is clearly contingent on technological conditions yet to be realised,” wrote the organisers, “without providing any evidence of its energy, industrial and economic viability. A political document does not become an industrial plan simply because it has been signed.”

The only politician present, Five Star Movement vice-president Mario Turco, was asked to leave. Not since 2012 had an anti-Ilva demonstration in Taranto been so successful. Today, people took to the streets not to make a demand, but to celebrate. The objective has now been achieved. The high-risk zone will no longer exist. And as well as the judiciary, the blame lies with the political establishment, including the current government. We had written about this in these pages before the ruling: at this stage, Giorgia Meloni would do well to take credit for the closure of Ilva: “Everyone wanted it, others promised it, the Meloni government delivered it”.