Claudio Marangoni, head of a
Milan court business court handling the Arcelor-Mittal-ex-IILVA
case, on Monday set a hearing for the urgent appeal filed by
commissioners for November 27.
Marangoni urged ArcelorMittal to stop shutting down
activities at the Taranto steelworks.
"The dispute is complex," said Marangoni.
ArcelorMittal's failure to comply with a deal on taking over
the former ILVA steel group is "glaring and full-blown", the
group's three commissioners say in an appeal filed Friday
against the Franco-Indian giant's announced pullout.
According to the appeal, ArcelorMittal is obliged to
"diligently safeguard the integrity and value of the branches of
the company".
The steel giant accepted the contract without guarantees, the
commissioners added.
They also ArcelorMittal's attempt to rescind its contract to
take over the former ILVA steel group is effectively a
"malicious attempt to force a rearrangement (of contractual
obligations) with violence and threats".
The commissioners said the reasons for seeking to abandon the
deal "have nothing to do with the justifications given" and that
the group "evidently does not consider what was previously
negotiated to be in its interests any longer".
ArcelorMittal has shown "devastating offensiveness" in
demanding a pullout, the commissioners said.
They said it had caused "incalculable damage" to the economy.
The leaders of Italy's big three trade union federations,
CGIL, CISL and UIL, will be received by President Sergio
Mattarella at 19:30 Monday to discuss the ArcelorMittal case and
other industrial crises, union sources said.
The Franco-Indian group, the world's largest steelmaker, has
said it is pulling out of the former ILVA group including its
troubled Taranto steelworks, sparking opposition from the
government and unions and the opening of two criminal probes,
one in Milan and one in Taranto.
Some unions have aid they will not obey ArcelorMittal's order
to shut down Taranto by December 4.
Premier Giuseppe Conte on Friday vowed to stop
ArcelorMittal's pullout.
Conte said Friday that ArcelorMittal was "assuming a very
great responsibility" in shutting down the former ILVA works in
Taranto and quitting a deal to take over the group, and would
pay damages in court.
He said the government would not let the shutdown continue.
Conte said the decision to stop production in Taranto,
Europe's largest steelworks, "is a clear violation of the
contractual commitments and grave damage to the national
economy.
(ArcelorMittal) will answer for this in a judicial forum both
as far as compensation for damages is concerned and as far as
the urgent procedure is concerned.".
Conte said the government had filed its appeal against
ArcelorMittal's pullout bid and welcomed a probe by Milan
prosecutors into possible evidence of a crime in the planned
exit.
ArcelorMitttal CEO Lucia Morselli told unions it was now a
"crime" to work in the Taranto blast furnace areas, and that
"legally the contract must be dissolved".
"We'd like to have a magic wand but we haven't got one," she
said, reiterating that the lifting of a penal shield against
prosecution for a cleanup of the highly polluting works in the
Puglia city was grounds for the Franco-Indian giant, the world's
largest steel group, to pull out.
In the latest twist, she warned that the shutdown would boost
emissions in Taranto, where emissions have already been linked
to years of higher than normal cancer rates.
The extraordinary commissioners of the former ILVA group's
steel works earlier Friday filed an urgent petition to a Milan
court to stop ArcelorMittal rescinding the contract to take over
the group, including its troubled Taranto factory.
The decision by the Franco-Indian steel giant, the world's
largest, to pull out of the takeover deal has rocked Premier
Conte's government.
Unions say that the company has prepared a plan to gradually
turn off the plant's furnaces and is determined to have pulled
out by December 4, leaving the commissioners in charge of
implementing the plan.
ArcelorMittal said it needs to pull out citing the lifting of
a 'penal shield' that protected managers involved in a clean up
of the Taranto plant from prosecution and the necessity of
shedding 5,000 workers across the group, which employs over
8,000 people in Taranto and some 3,000 more in Genoa and Novi
Ligure.
ArcelorMittal has "no legal right" to pull out of the deal, ,
Industry Minister Stefano Patuanelli told A.Mittal executives at
the summit with trade unions on the future of the group Friday.
A.Mittal said that after the shutdown it will take six months
to start up again.
The UILM trade union said after the summit, which unions said
had "gone badly", that "the workers won't turn off the plant".
While the Milan prosecutors are looking into possible
financial wrongdoing, their Taranto colleagues are probing
possible irregularities linked directly to the works there.
Some Italian newspapers, including La Repubblica and Il
Messaggero, on Monday reported that ArcelorMittal might be
willing to continue its year-long stewardship of the former ILVA
group if the penal shield is restored.
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