European Commission vice president and EU industry commissioner Mr Antonio Tajani said that "The action of the Italian government is going in the right direction."

Mr Tajani said that "The decree on ILVA that you are talking about, like the rest of the Hague convention approved by Minister Clini, goes in the right direction because it is going in the direction of simultaneously protecting health, environment and work. We cannot believe it impossible to perform a marriage between environmental policy and health and industrial policy."

He continued that "We must make sure that ILVA makes changes for the protection of health, but at the same time we need to avert the closure of a steel plant that would have worrying consequences, not just in Italy but in other parts of the EU."