Local residents and an MEP from the Left Group in the European Parliament are today (4 June) making an official complaint to the European Ombudsman about the Acciaierie d’Italia steel mill, still known by its former name Ilva, in the southern city of Taranto.
Despite opening an infringement procedure against Italy in 2013 for breaching environmental laws at the site, the EU has failed to escalate it appropriately, they say.
During that 12-year wait, residents are continuing to suffer the consequences of air, soil and groundwater pollution in Taranto, which numerous studies have linked to higher rates of cancer and other diseases.
“Today, we turn to the Ombudsman with a sense of responsibility but also with deep bitterness,” says Alessandro Marescotti, a Taranto resident and president of the Associazione PeaceLink, an NGO which is also listed as a complainant on the document seen by Euronews Green.
“We do so because we no longer have much confidence in the European Commission. The Commission had years to intervene. It received reports, studies, and appeals. Meanwhile, in Taranto, many people have fallen ill and died,” he says.
“The case of the ILVA plant in Taranto has, unfortunately, remained in the shadows of institutional indifference.”
Timeline of a ‘sacrifice zone’ in Taranto
“Greetings from Taranto, the only city founded by the Spartans in 706 BC.” This is how Massimo Castellana from the Taranto Parents Association (Genitori Tarantini) signs off on WhatsApp when I ask about the pollution that has blighted his city for decades.
It was described as a “sacrifice zone” by a UN Special Rapporteur in 2022 due to pollution from llva, which has loomed over the Tamburi district for the last 60 years. But there is clearly a lot of pride in this city on the Ionian Sea, and residents are not giving up without a fight.
The Italian government knew Taranto was an area “at high risk of an environmental crisis” as early as 1990. In 2001, photos and scientific evidence acquired by Marescotti revealed an alarming scene, “with thick toxic fumes that resembled something out of Dante’s Inferno.”
“According to analyses, the fumes contained carcinogenic substances in concentrations equivalent to more than 7,000 cigarettes over an eight-hour work shift,” he says.
Despite public outrage, Europe’s biggest steel plant was grindingly slow to follow EU rules; in particular, the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) adopted in 1996, which required all installations to have a permit by 2007.
Italy finally issued an authorisation in 2011, following legal action from the EU. But by 2012, mounting evidence of an ‘environmental disaster’ led to a local trial at which the judge ordered Ilva’s most polluting parts to be seized and shut down.
Since then, however, successive governments have issued 18 so-called “Save-Ilva” decrees to enable it to continue operating, having specially introduced the concept of a plant of ‘strategic national importance’.
“There is no economic, occupational, or strategic reason that can justify such fierce insistence from the politicians (and the unions, guilty of complicity) against the health of the Taranto people,” says Castellana.
“If the plant has not yet been closed, despite its danger being clarified at multiple levels, it is due to the subservience of a depressing political class to steel producers and industrialists, particularly in northern Italy.”
In 2013, following complaints from citizens and NGOs including PeaceLink, the Commission began an infringement procedure against Italy for violations of environmental standards.
Why is the infringement procedure against Italy lasting so long?
This infringement procedure has now been open for 12 years without any substantial further action. A ‘reasoned opinion’ – the next step when a member state fails to comply – followed in 2014, and then, bureaucratic silence.
MEPs who repeatedly questioned the lack of progress in the European Parliament (EP) were met with “vague and unsatisfactory answers”, according to the complaint.
For Valentina Palmisano, an MEP from Puglia, elected with the Five Star Movement in Italy, which is part of the Left Group in the European Parliament, this situation is unacceptable.
“European law cannot be applied selectively and Taranto cannot be treated as a rights-free zone,” she tells Euronews Green.
Palmisano believes the Commission’s prolonged inaction is politically motivated. “On the one hand, it shields itself from responsibility by pointing to the fact that an infringement procedure has been open since 2013, as if this absolves it from the ongoing health and environmental consequences of ILVA’s operations.
“On the other hand, it avoids referring Italy to the CJEU (Court of Justice of the European Union) because steel production remains politically sensitive and strategically important in the context of EU industrial policy.”
There is concerted pressure within the EU to boost domestic steel production – in response to Trump’s tariffs, Chinese steel dumping, and the shadow of war across Europe.
On 7 May this year – the same day one of Ilva’s two blast furnaces exploded – the Commission “decided to send an additional letter of formal notice to Italy.” For campaigners, it was again far too little, far too late.
In fact, the complaint from Palmisano and PeaceLink describes it as a backwards step in the infringement process. They say the Commission has failed to ensure legal enforcement and must now finally take Italy to the CJEU.
“Taranto has been sacrificed on the altar of economic interests, at the expense of health, dignity, and the fundamental rights of its inhabitants,” says Marescotti.
Residents bring their own case to European Court of Justice
Alongside this administrative approach, Taranto residents, spurred on by the premature deaths of family and friends, have pursued collective action to stem Ilva’s pollution.
A report by Sentieri, an epidemiological monitoring group, found that between 2005 and 2012, 3,000 deaths were directly linked to exposure to pollutants from the plant – including benzene, heavy metals, and dioxins. Cancer and excess overall mortality are well above regional averages, with childhood leukaemia nearly 50 per cent above expected levels.
A case brought by members of the Taranto Parents Association, including Castellana, was referred by the Milan district court to the CJEU for clarification. In a landmark ruling on 24 June last year – applicable to tens of thousands of sites in the EU – the top court said that operations must be suspended where there are serious threats to the environment and human health.
This ruling was brought back to the Tribunale di Milano for a hearing on 22 May, but no final decision has been reached yet. Castellana remains hopeful, but the Ombudsman complaint describes the case as being stuck in the bureaucratic hinterland that seems to surround Ilva.
In short, the complainants write, “The case remains pending, the ILVA steel plant continues to operate and pollute, and the ILVA infringement procedure is still ongoing.”
Ongoing environmental pollution in Taranto
The steel plant, which coats Taranto in fine red iron ore dust, appears to have left its mark on all living things.
The food chain has been corrupted, Castellana claims. A decade ago, the impact on livestock was a major concern, with thousands of sheep and goats culled after cheese made from their milk was found to contain dioxins above legal limits.
Now, a source with knowledge of the issue says, mussels are the most enduring bearers of dioxins in the environment. They grow in Mar Picolo (‘Small Sea’), an enclosed coastal lagoon where the filter feeders accumulate dioxins in their bodies that are stuck in the sediment.
Air pollution has fluctuated and improved over the years, notably around 2013, the source says, but Taranto is still awaiting remediation of its air, soil, and water.
In its call for buyers of Ilva, which remains under special administration, the Italian government stipulates that the new owner must decarbonise the plant in line with the EU’s goals.
Palmisano, however, thinks it should be nationalised; in order “to align industrial production with real ecological transition, based on green hydrogen, not gas, and finally undertake the necessary remediation of the ILVA site.”
“No transition is credible without first addressing the environmental and health devastation already caused,” she says.
Other campaigners want to see Ilva closed altogether, and its workers supported to transition into other sectors, bringing a dirty chapter to an end.
Their determination endures. Marescotti has previously said he owes his strength to always go on to his father, who was a partisan in the anti-fascist resistance against Mussolini.
Castellana says he would never move away from Taranto, “because Taranto is my mother. And a mother should not be abandoned.”
“We demand justice,” he says. “We owe it to the little Tarantinos who are no longer here, to those who are suffering today, and to future generations that we want to be able to live in health and enjoy the sublime beauty of Taranto.”
The European Commission and the Italian government have been contacted for comment.
