An ex-head of government who holds out his hand to foreign governments after losing office: Italy also recently had a Schröder case. Matteo Renzi, formerly head of the social democratic Partito Democratico (PD) and Prime Minister from 2014 to 2016, has recently attracted more attention in Saudi Arabia than in the second chamber of parliament, where he still has an electoral mandate to represent.
Even when his successor Giuseppe Conte was forced to resign in 2021, the boss was on business in the kingdom. He is said to have already collected a good million euros for his advice, which has not yet been disclosed in detail, on greening the Saudi desert landscape with eco-cities. On the other hand, his hymns to the strongman of the theocratic monarchy, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, are well known.
Dream fees that continue to grow through tax avoidance
For Renzi, MBS, who throws women’s rights activists into torture prisons for driving cars and, according to an international investigation, had the opposition journalist Jamal Kashoggi kidnapped and murdered in Istanbul, is “my friend, whom I have known for years”. His dictatorship was the place of “a possible new renaissance” and his order to murder was not proven.
Praise for dictators with bloody hands (“Putin is a flawless democrat”) and millions in fees for – yes, what actually? That sounds familiar, and the similarities are not over yet: like Schröder, Renzi is a social democrat, and like the ex-chancellor, Renzi seems to appreciate wine just as much as he preferred pouring water out for the people: Schröder’s Hartz system created a huge low-wage sector. Comrade Renzi, hailed as a “scrapper”, demolished Italy’s weak welfare state, attacked the protection against dismissal and paid poor households a monthly tax break of 80 euros.
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When criticized for his lucrative part-time job – after the euro and petrodollar, probably more of a main job – Renzi reacted with outrage, like the persecuted innocence: “Do we want to ban an ex-Italian prime minister, what all other ex-government heads around the world are constantly doing?” And the question can one ask. His case also involves legal issues – the public prosecutors in Florence and Rome are investigating because his bills are said to have been issued without any real consideration – but his predecessors are numerous:
Gerhard Schröder, who hatched the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline with Vladimir Putin when he was chancellor, ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, who increased his dream fees by avoiding taxes, or another high-ranking social democrat who advised an exploitative meat company for 10,000 euros a month. Little remains of the coordinate system that made the workers’ parties great.
Private interest against the common good
Back to Italy: Looking back on “Mani pulite”, the corruption investigation that began in February 30 years ago and ended Italy’s First Republic, Gherardo Colombo, one of the prosecutors of the time, drew a bitter balance: A “common cultural model” remains dominant, in which personal and public interests are opposed to each other”.
The fact that so many celebrities set a bad example should guarantee the success of the model. And it’s not just Italy that’s suffering.
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