The Milan Court of Appeal upholds the shutdown of the former Ilva blast furnaces: “The right to health takes precedence over economic interests”

The Milan Court of Appeal, Commercial Division, has for the second time upheld the order requiring the blast furnaces at the former Ilva site in Taranto to be shut down by the end of October, rejecting the second application for a stay of execution filed by Ilva, which is under special administration, and by Acciaierie d’Italia (AdI) ahead of the hearing before the Court of Cassation scheduled for 20 October. The order to shut down the hot end by 28 October therefore remains in force, with operations to be completed within 90 days of the final notification of the ruling.

The panel of judges – Ondei, Del Vecchio and Cortelloni – rejected the appeals in which the companies sought to suspend the enforceability of the decree issued in July, which orders the “suspension of production activities in the hot area” of the Taranto plant, with a deadline for completing the operations set for 28 October under the supervision of the regulatory authority. In its reasoning, the court specified that operations “may only resume once they have completely removed all asbestos still present in the plant” and “adopted the necessary measures to bring fine particulate emissions back within safety limits, with reference to the authorised production scenario of 6 million tonnes per year and, in any case, within the framework of the prescribed administrative procedure”.

The ruling states that the ‘danger’ arising from ‘the possible “shutdown” of the blast furnaces’ must give way ‘to the overriding right to health, with a view to striking the necessary balance between conflicting interests’. The protection of “the right to health”, in fact, is “in any case paramount, in due respect for the interpretation given at EU level, as well as for the constitutional provisions themselves”. Along the same lines is the comment by Ascanio Amenduni, the lawyer representing the citizens of Taranto who brought the civil case before the Milan courts: “Health once again prevails over an economic prejudice that is increasingly seen as tenuous and specious,” he remarked.

On 30 September, the parties’ arguments were heard before the judges. Deputy Public Prosecutor Angelo Renna had also requested that the new application for a stay of proceedings be dismissed, following the one already rejected on 11 September. The lawyers for the former Ilva and AdI, on the other hand, had reiterated their arguments – namely, the irreparable damage caused by the shutdown – and had requested a postponement until after the Supreme Court’s ruling, scheduled for 20 October. Lawyer Amenduni, however, had explained that, as the plant was now ‘operating at minimum capacity’, there was not even any ‘irreparable harm’. According to the Court, as stated in the 12-page order, “the scheduling of the hearing” by the Supreme Court changes nothing with regard to previous rulings which have emphasised the primacy of the right to health, given the plants’ harmful emissions and the presence of asbestos. Nothing changes, it states, "compared with the past in terms of the substantive protection of the interests at stake", and the scheduling of that hearing is merely "a consequence of the lodging of extraordinary appeals before the Supreme Court of Cassation".