Italy’s government is filed an urgent court appeal to try to stop ArcelorMittal walking away from a 2018 deal to buy the troubled Ilva steel plant.
ArcelorMittal has blamed a government move to scrap previous guarantees of legal immunity during a massive clean-up operation at Ilva’s heavily polluted plant in the southern city of Taranto.
But the government has said the group has no legal grounds to pull out of the contract and has accused it of using the immunity issue as a pretext to walk away from Ilva because it is running up heavy losses there.
The company is due to hand over Europe’s biggest steel plant to state-appointed administrators on 4 December and had begun winding down operations ahead of turning off blast furnaces and production lines.
