There’s already a website – trumpbelgrade.com. 

“Belgrade welcomes a Global Icon – TRUMP, Unrivaled Luxury,” it reads, above a rendering of a glittering hotel. 

Pre-sales, apparently, were slated to start in the summer. Hence, perhaps, the haste with which Serbia’s government is trying to remove all obstacles to a hotel bearing the name of the 45th and 47th president of the United States and a complex of 1,500 apartments.

The problem lies in the fact the hotel should be built on the site of the former Yugoslav Army HQ, a socialist-era landmark partly destroyed during NATO airstrikes in 1999, which stands in a prime location in the centre of the capital.

By law, any development of the site would require the consent of Serbia’s Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, something the Institute has yet to give.

So, the government has moved to sidestep the Institute altogether, with a ‘special’ law – lex specialis – declaring the project of strategic importance. That law, adopted on November 7, obliges all state bodies to lift the protection the ruined building enjoyed as a site of important cultural heritage.