Editor's note: Sara Martinetto is a research intern at
the T.M.C. Asser Institute. She has recently completed her LLM in Public
International Law at the University of Amsterdam. She holds interests in
Migration Law, Criminal Law, Human Rights and European Law, with a
special focus on their transnational dimension.
More than 11000 deaths and 25000
hospitalisations: the numbers divulged by the prosecution expert report assessing the human consequence of
the operation of Ilva industries in the Italian city of Taranto are staggering.
The environmental disaster caused by the plant brought the whole area to its
knees and, in spite of all the efforts made, is still on-going. This is the
story of a never-ending conflict. A conflict between different rights, which
need to be balanced; between public authorities, who bear responsibility for
ensuring and protecting those rights; between different normative levels and
powers, given the numerous infringement proceedings opened by the EU Commission
and the most recent claims lodged to the European Court of Human Rights
(ECtHR). In the following sections I will try to shed some light on the main
legal aspects of this tragic saga. For clarity, this article is divided in two posts:
the first deals with the national level, while the second focuses on the
supranational dimension of the case.More...