EC orders recovery of 84 mn in ILVA aid

(ANSA) - Rome, December 21 - The European Commission said Thursday that two loans granted by Italy in 2015 to support the troubled ILVA steelworks in the southern port city of Taranto involved illegal State aid.
    Consequently, Italy must now recover this undue benefit of about 84 million euros, it added.
    The commission instead found that a number of other support measures were not State aid.
    Thursday's decision does not interfere with the implementation of essential environmental measures to tackle pollution at the ILVA premises in Taranto, which has been blamed for high cancer rates in the area. "When the Commission opened the investigation, we made clear that our State aid probe will not stand in the way of, or slow down, the urgent environmental clean-up works in the Taranto Region. This essential de-pollution work should continue without any delay to protect the health of Taranto's inhabitants,"said European Commissioner Margarethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy. Italian Minister for Economic Development Carlo Calenda expressed his "great satisfaction" over the decision. The undue benefit earmarked by the commission "corresponds to 84 million euros out of a total of over 2 billion euros investigated", he said.