Renzi proud of new environment law

(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.