“Save Fincantieri” Decree to arrive

Rome - It is a race against time. The government is due to issue a decree to “Save Fincantieri” today which should release the areas at the Monfalcone plant seized by the Court of Gorizia after an investigation into the disposal of waste material left over from the manufacture of ships. The measure is expected to be rushed through today’s meeting of the Council of Ministers provided that the last remaining technical problems can be resolved. Also nearly ready is the plan for ports announced by Minister Graziano Delrio, but the plan could require a further in depth review. The decision to take action at Monfalcone was agreed by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Development, Federica Guidi, after a meeting that took place yesterday and included the participation of Friuli-Venezia Giulia’s Regional President, Debora Serracchiani, Minister of the Environment, Gian Luca Galletti, and the C.E.O. of Fincantieri, Giuseppe Bono.

Everyone agreed that a quick solution was needed in order to offer some certainty to the approximately 5,000 workers affected, including direct employees (1,600) and those in the associated industries (another 3,400). “To avoid another case like the ILVA Debacle”: this was the general line in response to the fears expressed by the president of Confindustria, Giorgio Squinzi, who raised the spectre of a prolonged halt in production akin to the events at ILVA’s Taranto plant. The approach chosen is to issue a decree to resolve the emergency situation and to avoid paying out the massive amount of unemployment insurance that would otherwise be required. As government sources have explained, there is no room in the budget for these expenditures. The decree to resolve Fincantieri’s problem will provide an, “authentic interpretation,” of the regulations that (somewhat hastily) implemented the European directive on the disposal of waste material from the manufacturing of ships (carpeting, plastics and other materials).

The government will clarify that the regulation allows the temporary storage of waste materials at the sites made available by Fincantieri (for up to one year) before their final and proper disposal. In essence it is not a question of the “uncontrolled disposal” of waste, and as Fincantieri has pointed out, the waste in question is not a danger to public health. The decision to resolve this issue by decree was made after the issue of the timeframe for its conversion into law was resolved - it will now occur in mid August. That is of course impossible. The solution is to make it a “throwaway decree” (so as to release Monfalcone as quickly as possible) whose text can then be transformed into an amendment to the Local Authorities Decree, which is already being reviewed in parliament and will become law before the August holiday. The path has now been marked out. All that remains is to see whether the work of Minister Guidi’s experts will be ready in time for today’s meeting of the Council of Ministers, and whether the text will be approved by the Prime Minister’s staff, who want to avoid any further judicial obstacles.

Prime Minister Renzi himself is following the Fincantieri case and is determined to resolve the situation quickly - a situation which could endanger the group’s commissions (it is listed on the stock market) which have finally returned to the pre-economic crisis levels of 2007. Mega-commissions for several cruise ships are now at stake (the first, the Carnival Vista, should be delivered in April, 2016) but the list of orders has also grown with a new €1.1 billion commission from Finmeccanica for the construction of an amphibious unit for the Italian Navy. In short, the seizure came at just the right time to ruin the party, when Italian Navy commissions had finally started to come in again. Whether it was an “anti-business decision” (as Squinzi called it) or more of the usual Italian bureaucratic-judicial bungling is difficult to say. What is clear is that Renzi does not want another ‘helping’ of ILVA.