(ANSA) Salerno, May 22 - Premier Matteo Renzi said Friday
he is proud to have ushered in Italy's new environmental
protection law that creates new crimes regarding environmental
pollution and disasters.
"We are proud, we are happy," Renzi said during an
electoral rally in the southern port of Salerno, "we had
promised this ..."
In the Puglian port of Taranto, however, the national
Greens Party leader Angelo Bonelli said the grouping will appeal
to the European Union against the legislation on the grounds
that it provides loopholes that will make it easy to circumvent
and encourage too lenient sentences against wrongdoers, and that
it is incompatible with a recent European directive.
Taranto is the location of Europe's largest steel plant,
ILVA where it has employed some 20,000 people and been blamed
for decades of health and environmental degradation.
The Senate gave final approval Tuesday to the law that
establishes culpable felonies against the environment,
trafficking and abandoning radioactive material, and the crime
of impeding environmental controls.
Several high-profile environmental scandals have made
headlines in Italy in recent years, including problems linked to
the so-called 'ecomafia,' linked to the Camorra, the Neapolitan
Mafia, responsible for the illegal burial and burning of toxic
waste in the so-called Land of Fire's area of Campania around
Caserta.
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