The Council of State stops the TAR Lecce and the decree of the mayor of Taranto on the shutdown of the plants in the hot area of the former Ilva di Taranto steelworks, now Acciaierie d’Italia. The appellate judges (fourth section) after the hearing on May 13 last ordered the annulment of the sentence of the TAR of Lecce n.249 / 2021. According to Acciaierie d’Italia, the new company between ArcelorMittal Italia and Invitalia, “the hypotheses of shutting down the hot area are therefore void” and “shutdown of the connected plants, whose production activity will continue with regularity”.
Inadequate and contradictory investigation
The power of ordinance, according to the administrative judges, “is not supported by an adequate investigation and is, at the same time, vitiated by intrinsic contradiction and lack of motivation”. This was stated by the Council of State, section four, in the 60 pages of motivation of the sentence with which it annulled the sentence of the Lecce TAR of last February which, confirming a previous ordinance of the mayor of Taranto in February 2020, had ordered the shutdown of the plants of the hot area of the former Ilva because they are polluting. According to the appellate judges – the TAR sentence had in fact been challenged to the Council of State – “the illegality of the contested order must be declared and consequently its annulment must be pronounced”.
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“Residual” powers of the mayor
The section “did not agree with the main thesis of the appellant companies, according to which any space for intervention by the mayor must be excluded as the remedies provided by the law, in the context of the integrated environmental authorization (Aia) which assists the activity carried out in the establishment, would be suitable to face any possible inconvenience. However, he considered that that complex of remedies (including the emergency powers already attributed to the Municipality by the 1934 Consolidated Law on Health), the remedies connected to The Hague which provide for the intervention of the Ministry of ecological transition and the special rules adopted for Ilva from 2012 onwards) is such as to limit the mayor’s power of ordinance, already by its nature “residual”, only to exceptional situations in which the inadequacy of those remedies to deal with particular and imminent situations of danger to health is proven public “. Thus the Council of State, in a note, explains the sentence that led to the annulment of the sentence of the Lecce TAR.
Giorgetti: “Now industrial plan with Pnrr philosophy”
The decision immediately brings with it institutional reactions. The first is that of the Minister of Economic Development Giancarlo Giorgetti: “In light of the ruling of the Council of State on the former Ilva, which clarifies the operational and legal framework, the government will proceed swiftly on an environmentally compatible industrial plan and in compliance with people’s health. The objective is to respond to the needs of the development of the national steel supply chain by accepting the philosophy of the recently approved NRP », declares the owner of the Mise.