Former Ilva, decree on guarantees published in Official Gazette: shorter sureties, 28 October deadline stands

Decree-law no. 154 of 28 August 2026, “Urgent measures to ensure operational continuity of plants of national strategic interest,” has been published in the Official Gazette under editorial code 26G00174. This is the text approved by the Council of Ministers on 26 August, and it addresses a point that two weeks ago remained without regulation: we wrote about it on 17 August, when the government did not yet have a measure ready.

What the decree does. The measure concerns the frequency of financial guarantees that strategic steel plants subject to sale procedures must provide for the management of waste and landfills within the industrial perimeter. Companies managing at least one plant under extraordinary administration are allowed to sign sureties of reduced duration compared to the ordinary regime; the available material does not specify how many years the new duration corresponds to. The regulation thus overcomes the formal notice from the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security on industrial waste management, as reported by Quotidiano di Puglia based on the text of the regulation.

The problem the decree addresses is one of cash flow and deadlines: a long-term surety on internal landfills weighs on the budget of a receivership administration that has no certain multi-year horizon ahead, because the plant is up for sale. Reducing its duration eases the immediate burden but does not resolve the question of who will be responsible over time for securing those volumes.

The Council of Ministers meeting that enacted the text, on a proposal by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Ministers Adolfo Urso and Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, lasted around fifteen minutes, according to the statement reported by L’Eco del Litorale and ANSA’s account. No measure on the industrial structure, no provision on the tender.

The second element of the day concerns the candidates. On 26 August a spokesperson for CE Industries stated that the group “has not, at this time, submitted any bid for Ilva’s operations” (source: ANSA). The clarification concerns a name that had been indicated among the potential buyers, which we reported on 26 August. Accounts differ on this point, and the available material does not allow us to establish whether the discrepancy concerns the substance — a bid that does not exist — or the formal characterization of contact with the receivers. il manifesto reads the clarification as a withdrawal from the process; here we limit ourselves to recording the spokesperson’s statement.

The deadline that matters most remains unchanged. The decree does not affect the 28 October deadline set by the Milan Court of Appeal for the suspension of the hot area, as reported by Quotidiano di Puglia. That is sixty-one days from publication in the Gazette: within that window the government must reach a buyer, or another regulation.