In 1998, he began working at Arcelor Mittal, both at its headquarters in Madrid and Pamplona, where he was active as head of International Business Development in the Construction Unit.

In that term, he was Vice-President of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament[4] and a member of the Delegation for relations with the People's Republic of China.

[citation needed] He was implicated in the 2011 cash for influence scandal together with fellow MEPs Adrian Severin, Ernst Strasser and Zoran Thaler.

[6] Pablo Zalba had a very important role in the approval of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the European Union and South Korea.

[10] On 24 January 2012, he was named Vice-President of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, replacing José Manuel García-Margallo.

In November 2012, Zalba headed the delegation of the European Parliament in the Parliamentary Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO)[13] in Geneva.

Zalba is Vice-President of the steering committee of the Parliamentary Conference on the World Trade Organization in the European Parliament, coordinator of the EPP Group Young Members Network.

He is also member of the following Intergroups of the European Parliament: Family, Child Rights, Development help, Youth, Sport, Automotive, SME (small and medium-sized enterprises), Minority Languages and Wine.

[21] "Retos y logros en las relaciones de la UE con América Latina", Pablo Zalba and Julián Conthe, 2013[22] - "Economic shock absorbers for the Eurozone.