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ROME -- This week Italy began sending would-be migrants intercepted on their way to Italy’s shores to two centers the Italian government is financing and operating in nearby Albania.

The initiative has been a controversial one, since in Albania, which is not a member of the European Union, asylum seekers will not have access to rights and protections guaranteed by the European Asylum System.

The idea was the brainchild of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the new face of Europe’s right wing. Officially, Meloni has argued that the plan would reduce the stress on Italian communities, also knowing that while the refugees are in Albania they’ll still be about as far from the Italian border as they were before setting sail from North Africa.

Without publicly commenting on the upcoming U.S. elections except for vowing to work with whoever wins, Meloni quietly seems poised to become Donald Trump’s go-to European partner if he is victorious. It’s easy to see why.

Most European leaders kept Italy’s Albania initiative at an arm’s length when it was first unveiled last year, but now, reports are that leaders from multiple countries are keenly watching to see how the Italy-Albania deal works out to evaluate similar plans. Slowly, the strategy called “third country relocation” is becoming part of the mainstream.

There’s more: due in a large part to lobbying from Italy, the European Union has adopted policies aimed at spreading out the cost of accepting refugees, stepped up patrolling the Mediterranean Sea, and at least in principle, to work to boost African economies to help convince potential migrants to stay home.

Impacting European policies on migration is one of many ways the 47-year-old Meloni appears to be coming into her own. She may now be Europe’s most influential right-wing leader, helping shape European policy on Ukraine, on the transition to green energy, on artificial intelligence, on surrogate pregnancies, and on monetary policy. This year, she even holds the rotating presidency of the Group of Seven (G-7) club of the world’s largest and wealthiest countries.

Global leaders ranging from Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky to new Prime Minister Keir Starmer from the U.K.’s Labor Party and from Pope Francis to billionaire innovator Elon Musk have met and compared notes with Meloni. Back in 2019, Italy became the largest economy to join China’s controversial Belt-and-Road Initiative and then, five years later, Italy under Meloni became the most high-profile country to abandon the program -- yet Meloni was still welcomed with pomp and circumstance in Beijing by China’s Xi Jinping.

Oct. 22 will mark the two-year anniversary of Meloni’s installation as Italy’s prime minister, a development that has been full of firsts -- she is the first woman to be Italy’s head of government, the first person to become the country’s prime minister without having attended university, and Italy’s first right-wing leader since Benito Mussolini during World War II.

Her path to her nation’s highest office -- and to her unofficial leadership role among European conservatives -- was marked with concerns that she would return Italy to Mussolini-style Fascism. And there was reason to believe that might happen: Meloni has been praising Mussolini for years. Her political party, the Brothers of Italy, was built on the shattered foundation of Mussolini’s movement, and even today, the party’s symbol (a flame bearing the three colors of the Italian flag) is derived from Mussolini’s standard.

Instead, Meloni has proved to have shrewd, calculating political instincts. Rather than direct clashes with European Union leadership often seen from veteran European conservatives like Viktor Orban of Hungary and France’s Marine Le Pen, Meloni has instead cultivated a delicate balance in her relationship with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. There are even whispers in Italy that Meloni (who in the past has had kind words for Russia’s Vladimir Putin) may have struck a deal in which the EU wouldn’t examine Meloni’s strict refugee policies too closely in return for Italy’s unwavering support for Ukraine.

Similarly, she hasn’t fawned over Trump as has Orban, who went to Mar-a-Lago in July, or Matteo Salvini, Meloni’s junior coalition partner in Italy. But few in Italy doubt who Meloni would want to see in the White House come July.

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