A political controversy has erupted in Italy over Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s decision not to travel to New York for the UN General Assembly.

Former prime minister and current leader of the Italia Viva party Matteo Renzi criticised the decision, stressing that Meloni sent Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to New York while she herself chose to go to Milan for a dinner for Fashion Week.

“It is a blunder. Our prime minister preferred to stay in Italy to look after her election campaign,” Renzi stressed.

The Five Star Movement took a similar position, considering that the head of the government in Rome clearly made the wrong choice. “The international situation is dramatic, but Meloni prefers to go to Fashion Week and give an interview to Rai television,” they said.

Meloni herself addressed the issue, explaining that she “thought it was right to go to Milan in order to support Italian fashion, at a difficult time overall for the sector, which continues to bring great satisfaction to the country.”

According to many observers, however, the Italian prime minister’s absence from the UN General Assembly may also be due to another factor: by making this move, she may have wanted to avoid possible meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump, with whom tensions had risen significantly at the beginning of the summer, primarily over military operations against Iran.