The first trial for eco-criminals in Italy opened in Turin

The first hearing of the so-called "Smog trial" took place in Turin on Tuesday 18 June first trial for eco-defendants ever carried out in Italy.Among the accused are the former mayors of the Piedmontese capital Chiara Appendino and Piero Fassino, as well as the former president of the Piedmont Region Sergio Chiamparino.According to the accusations, between 2015 and 2019, they did not put in place adequate measures to guarantee the protection of air quality of the city of Turin, which today appears to be among the Municipalities more at risk for this type of pollution.For this reason, public administrators are charged with the crime of negligent environmental pollution.According to the prosecutor's consultants, the concentrations above the legal limits of the pollutants recorded in the Turin area would have caused over a thousand premature deaths and several hospital admissions.A second line of investigation, referring to a subsequent period, also sees the current president of the Region, Alberto Cirio, among those under investigation.

The trial began after the investigations opened following a complaint presented in 2017 by Roberto Mezzalama, president of the Torino Respira Committee, admitted as a civil party to the trial (together with Greenpeace Italia, Justice Climatica Ora, ISDE-Italian Association of Doctors for the Environment and seven private citizens).«The thing that surprised me the most when I started looking for data for the complaint – ha declared Mezzalama - was that reports by ARPA epidemiologists were published on the Municipality and Region websites which clearly spoke of many hundreds dead due to smog every year.So it was evident that the administrators were perfectly aware of the situation, but were not at all making the decisions necessary to resolve the problem, on the contrary."The legal initiative was possible thanks to the introduction, in 2015, of new legislative provisions regarding environmental crimes (law n.68 of 2015), which introduced, among others, the crime of environmental pollution (art.452 bis of the criminal code).

According to a recent report reports of Legambiente, today Turin still appears to be one of the cities most at risk of smog in Italy.The levels of fine particles (PM10, PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) here appear to have been "stable for several years now" and "far from the regulatory limits that will be approved shortly by the EU, scheduled for 2030 and above all by the values ​​suggested by the World Health Organization."The next hearing of the trial, the first of its kind in Italy, is scheduled for July 4th.

[by Valeria Casolaro]