ArcelorMittal: judge denies extension for blast furnace 2

2019-12-11T08:04:23.910Z

The judge of the trial, Francesco Maccagnano, denied the extension requested by Ilva in extraordinary administration for the use of the blast furnace 2 (by ArcelorMittal) in order to do further security work. On Monday, the Public Prosecutor's Office had expressed a favorable opinion on the extension. With the extension denied, the deadline for bringing the blast furnace up to standard within two days, December 13, the plant now risks the new seizure and the restart of the shutdown schedule. Ilva in as will now appeal to the Court of Review for the provision of Maccagnano. On the blast furnace 2 of the steelmaker of Taranto, if the Court accepted Ilva's request for an extension, "it would disapply for a very broad term a precautionary measure intended to prevent the realization of a very specific risk, namely that of the verification of accidents of the same especially the one that occurred to Alessandro Morricella on 8 June 2015 ". The judge of the trial, Francesco Maccagnano, writes this in the 29-page provision with which he denied Ilva in extraordinary administration, owner of the plant, a temporal extension for the further works to make the blast furnace safe. The temporal extension for the additional safety measures for the Altoforno 2, requested by the Ilva extraordinary administration, must be denied for the risks connected to the health of the workers. "Safety in the workplace - writes judge Francesco Maccagnano of the Criminal Court of Taranto, in his provision - is a 'prius', not a 'posterius'". The acceptance of Ilva's request would endorse a "patently unjustifiable" risk given the overall time frame of the works.