Under the agreement, Albania would hold up to three thousand migrants and refugees in two Italian-run processing centres located near its port of Shengjin for periods of about a month.
It is expected that up to thirty six thousand people a year could be sent to the country.
The agreement has been denounced by rights groups with the International Rescue Committee describing it as dehumanising.
The deal, approved by Albania’s Constitutional Court last month, was backed by seventy seven lawmakers in the one hundred and forty-seat parliament, dominated by Prime Minister Edi Rama‘S Socialist Party.
