The Zapatero case is a suspected case of corruption, on which it is better not to pronounce in advance of the outcome of the investigation, but it is also a very clear – and far from isolated – case of business capitalisation of the political and economic relations accumulated by exercising the highest power of government in a European democracy.

Zapatero was not the first and will not be the last, not even in that European left that claims to be superior and immune to these vulgar temptations.

Most importantly, however, for Zapatero and all the others, this is a politically agnostic businessism, which does not distinguish and discriminate between clients – companies, institutions, academies, government bodies – on the basis of the nature of the regimes they serve or directly embody, and rather favours rogue states – Russia, China, Venezuela, Arab theocracies and Asian satrapies… – creating for their benefit a network of parallel diplomacy as influential as the official one.

It is difficult to circumscribe these activities according to one, so to speak, commodity criterion.
They are (former) political leaders who sell and broker a little bit of everything and not all the same thing: goods and services, opinions and influence, relations and cooperation, consultancy for companies and reputational diplomacy for states, directly participating in the boards of third country institutions or operating as contractors for their political image and global economic penetration strategies.

Considering only the former heads of state and government who ‘worked’ for non-democratic regimes – regardless of the nature of the services rendered and the level of real and perceived political compromise – those who come from the left (Schröder, Blair, Lipponen, Kern, Gusenbauer, Zapatero, D’Alema, Prodi, Renzi, Kwaśniewski) are significantly more numerous than those who come from the centre-right (Esko Aho, Cameron, Johnson, Fillon, Schüssel).

Whether this is a coincidence or not, the resounding success of the hybrid wars of Europe’s enemies in European public opinion is by no means coincidental, since some of Europe’s leading political leaders of the past decades are on this list.
Success that has had, at the very least, a little internal help and domestic complicity, even if disguised as economic or cultural diplomacy.

Obviously, there is no law today that prevents a former European head of state or government from working for Europe’s enemies and swearing and perjuring themselves on their trustworthiness, and above all, there is clearly no social sanction or sufficient reputational disincentive for such work and the associated earnings.

However, the ‘so-and-so’ of statesmen converted into lobbyists is anything but a sign of health and normality and casts a baleful shadow over the destinies of Europe.