• AcelorMittal, Di Maio: "The criminal shield is a problem for the majority"

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November 13, 2019

The Minister of Economic Development, Stefano Patuanelli, delegated the negotiation with Arcelor Mittal, with the mandate to try to avoid the reintroduction of legal protection, along with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. But if the French-Indian giant should return to sit at the table, it will be possible to assess the possibility of a time-limited shield provided that there is a broad environmental remediation plan. This is a summary, according to parliamentary sources M5s, the thesis prevailed last night during a three-hour meeting of the Senate group with the manager of Mise Patuanelli.

Patuanelli explained that everything will be done so that Arcelor Mittal does not withdraw from the contract and respects the commitments. But to give more room for negotiation there would therefore have been an opening by many senators so that in the counter-proposal that the government made to Arcelor Mittal there was also the theme of the shield. Contrary to this perspective, some senators like Giarrusso ("We cannot allow Italy to be treated as a colony") and former minister Lezzi who proposed to rely on Jindal or a solution that could put together CDP and a consortium of Italian entrepreneurs.

The senators have in any case signed a document in which it was agreed that there should be no confidence if it were possible to vote for the reintroduction of the criminal shield and that in any case the subject will eventually be the subject of discussion of a further assembly.

The former Ilva issue was also discussed during yesterday's parliamentary meeting, with Di Maio explaining that at the moment it is necessary to wait and take time, forcing Arcelor Mittal to stay anyway. Many deputies, parliamentary sources explain, have stressed that in any case collegial management is needed and it is necessary to move within the government to find a common solution.

In the confusion that revolves around the affair, then, this morning Di Maio affirmed that he does not believe that "there will be a vote on the penal shield for Arcelor Mittal" in Parliament. "It makes no sense to reintroduce it," he said in an interview with Radio24, "because we were told that there would still be 5000 redundancies." The pentastellato leader announced: "We will challenge the withdrawal from the former Ilva presented by ArcelorMittal".

In the meantime, the House Budget Committee has declared the amendments presented this morning by Italia Viva and Forza Italia, asking to reinstate the criminal shield, to be inadmissible due to foreign matters.