The government may revoke the
tender that gave troubled steel group ILVA to Arcelor Mittal if
a company asks to take part, Industry Minister Luigi Di Maio
said Thursday.
"If a company were to ask us to take part in the tender, and
there were reasons of opportunity, we might revoke the tender,"
he said.
"Mittal has always been in good faith," Di Maio added.
"The State committed the perfect crime by creating a
procedure full of flaws and illegalities", he said on the
opinion from the State attorney-general's office.
The minister added that a deal with the trade unions was in
the public interest.
Di Maio, who is also labour minister and deputy premier, said
earlier this month that he had asked the attorney general's
office to give an opinion on whether the process via which
Arcelor Mittal got the green light to take over ILVA and its
troubled Taranto steel plant should be annulled.
Di Maio has said the process is tainted by irregularities.
Arcelor Mittal got the OK for a takeover of ILVA, which is in
the hands of government-appointed administrators after being at
the centre of environmental scandal linked to high cancer rates
in the Taranto area, under the previous centre-left government.
Di Maio said his letter to the attorney general's office
requested "an opinion on the effective existence of reasons of
public interest to legitimize an eventual annulment".
"It will be up to the law to tell me what I have to do," Di
Maio told La7 television.
"Di Maio won't decide. It will be up to the attorney
general's office to say whether the conditions are there to
revoke the procedure.
"Then a decision will be taken"
Di Maio, the leader of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement
(M5S), said he was still not satisfied with Arcelor Mittal's
plan to take over ILVA after calling for more guarantees for the
environment and jobs.
"It is clear that this jobs plan cannot satisfy our demands,"
said Di Maio, adding that Arcelor Mittal had not made "steps
forward".
"AM must show signs a life and tell us if it will move from
the figures agreed with former (industry) minister (Carlo)
Calenda and then perhaps we can start talking again".
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