Ilva set to shut down following the Milan Court of Appeal’s ruling

Today’s ruling by the Milan Court of Appeal will not shut down Ilva, as the government will now attempt to claim. Ilva has already been shut down since December 2025, when the special administrators decided to close all the blast furnaces and coking plants. This marked, for the first time in Ilva’s history, the end of the integrated production cycle. Since then, the Taranto steelworks has been processing imported pig iron in its sole remaining operational blast furnace, number 2, whilst number 4 was shut down along with the sintering plants. Ilva currently produces less than 1 million tonnes of steel per year, compared with the 6 authorised. Consequently, it is in a state of financial crisis, with €8 billion in debt and a loss of €50 million a month. Consequently, 4,500 employees are on special redundancy scheme. Consequently, the government has today granted a further €100 million in bridging loans, but the European Commission has stated that this will be the last. Never before in history has the situation reached this point. Despite the fact that three years ago, when Minister Urso decided to oust ArcelorMittal, he claimed to have saved Ilva and to want to turn it into “Europe’s largest green steelworks”.

The ruling by the Milan Court of Appeal, which cannot be appealed, has ordered the special administrators to commence work as early as tomorrow to shut down the hot area within 90 days. The plants may only be reactivated once all asbestos has been completely removed. It should be noted that, to date, the presence of asbestos is the only proven cause of death linked to Ilva. When the publicly owned Italsider was sold to the Riva family, 7,000 employees took early retirement due to asbestos exposure. And now there are still 2 tonnes of asbestos at the plant, a fact the trade unions are using to call for a new special law today to allow for a similar number of early retirements, and to ask the court to order the plant’s shutdown. For two years, the government has been unable to sell it, so it is now at least trying to lease it out. Neither will happen: the court has taken the heat off the government, after the government had already taken the steel out of the blast furnace.