A restaurant dedicated to Georgia Meloni has opened near a refugee camp in Albania where asylum claims from people trying to enter the EU by sea will be processed, as part of a controversial pact promoted by Italy's far-right prime minister.
Trattoria Meloni, a seafood restaurant in the northern port of Shenzhen, was opened by George Luca, a restaurant owner who is close to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.
The restaurant is plastered with 70 portraits of Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy, a neo-fascist party, heads Italy's ruling coalition. There's a smiling Meloni, a serious Meloni, an angry Meloni and Meloni as child, teenager and politician.
"When cuisine, art and politics come together, wonderful things can be created," Luca told AFP.
In the summer of last year, Meloni and Rama first drew up the migration plan, which human rights associations described as illegal under international law but which was tacitly approved by the EU.
Meloni visited the site of the Shengjin centre in June, before the restaurant opened. It is one of two centres expected to start processing asylum applications in the coming weeks. Under the Italian-funded deal, men who cross the Mediterranean from North Africa and are intercepted by the Italian coastguard will be taken to Albania.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been criticised by human rights groups and his Labour Party colleagues after expressing "great interest" in the migration pact during his meeting with Meloni in Rome last week, while pledging to send £4 million to support her controversial crackdown on illegal migration.
Meloni once said Italy should repatriate the migrants and then "sink the boats that rescued them". In the past, she has also called for a naval blockade of North Africa.
However, the centres have been welcomed by the local population as they create jobs in a poor region of Albania.
Luca, the son of a famous Albanian actor and a former actor himself, said he was fascinated by Meloni's personality, calling her "extraordinary".
He said he hoped she would return to sample his food and admire the portraits of her that adorn every inch of the restaurant's walls.
The portraits were all painted by the famous Albanian artist Helidon Haliti.
Meloni is "a very interesting, strong character, and even if her political beliefs are not mine, that has not stopped me from doing my job with passion," Haliti told AFP.
"Did I need permission to paint her portrait?" he added. "Did Andy Warhol need permission to paint Marilyn Monroe? In postmodernism it's allowed, and I think with Melonie I've succeeded."
Meloni was also the main actor in the July 2023 agreement signed between the EU and Tunisia, which meant paying the North African country millions of euros to stop migrant boats sailing, as well as investing in businesses and education, all with the aim of deterring migration.
The policy didn't bear much fruit in the early stages, but now the deal, along with another - first made by Italy in 2017 - that equips and trains the Libyan coast guard to stop people leaving the country, is seen as capable of reducing the flow of migrants.
The deal with Libya essentially sends people back to detention camps, where they are subjected to torture and other abuses. Last week in. "The Guardian reported on shocking abuses of migrants in Tunisia. | BGNES
