Trattoria Meloni contains 70 portraits of Italian PM and is near site where arrivals to the EU are processed
A restaurant dedicated to Giorgia Meloni has opened in the vicinity of a camp in Albania where the asylum claims of people who seek to enter the EU by sea will be processed as part of a controversial pact promoted by the Italian far-right prime minister.
Trattoria Meloni, a seafood restaurant in the northern port of Shengjin, was opened by Gjergj Luca, a restaurant owner who is close to the Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama.
The restaurant is filled with 70 portraits of Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist origins, leads Italy’s ruling coalition. There is a smiling Meloni, a serious Meloni, an angry Meloni, and Meloni as a child, teenager and politician.
“When cuisine, art and politics come together, you can make beautiful things,” Luca told AFP.
Meloni and Rama first hatched the migration plan, branded by human rights associations as illegal under international law but tacitly endorsed by the EU, last summer.
Meloni visited the site of the Shengjin centre in June, before the restaurant opened. It is one of two centres expected to begin processing asylum claims in the coming weeks. Under the Italy-funded deal, men crossing the Mediterranean from north Africa and intercepted by the Italian coastguard will be taken to Albania.
The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, was criticised by human rights groups and his Labour party backbenchers after expressing “great interest” in the migration pact during a meeting with Meloni in Rome last week while vowing to send £4m to support her controversial crackdown on irregular migration.
Meloni once said Italy should repatriate 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 been largely welcomed by local people for creating jobs in an impoverished region of Albania.
Luca, the son of a famous Albanian actor and a former actor himself, said he was charmed by Meloni’s personality, calling her “extraordinary”.
He said he hopes she will come back to taste his food and admire her portraits, which adorn every inch of the restaurant’s walls.
Read More: Meloni-themed restaurant opens near asylum-seeker camp in Albania