The Italian government is sending migrants to stay across the Adriatic Sea while their asylum applications are processed.

But NGOs say that Rome is pushing its problem on to a poor country.

They say they're concerned about how the migrants will be treated.

EW's Jack Parrott takes a look at how this deal will work.

The first place migrants will arrive in Albania is the port of Shenzhen.

The men will be put in buses and taken to Jada, around 22 kilometers inland.

The women and children will be taken directly to Italy.

The men will also join them there later if their application is approved.

Italy though is in the EU's border free area, which means those who are granted asylum can travel while Albania is outside of the EU.

The people who will be brought to the centres are the ones the Italian Coast Guard has rescued from smugglers boats in the Mediterranean Sea.

Last year nearly 140,000 people arrived in Italy this way.

And this is what the inside of the centre looks like, where men will be housed four in a cell for a 28-day period. 3,000 can be held here at one time.

Italian officials hope to process up to 36,000 applications per year.

Those who are refused asylum by Italy will be repatriated back to their countries of origin from here within three months, perhaps never having set foot on EU soil.

It is a new, courageous, unprecedented path, but one that perfectly reflects the European spirit and that has all the credentials to be taken also with other non-EU nations.

The first 16 migrants to arrive here come from Bangladesh and Egypt, two of the 22 countries Italy designates as so-called safe countries, meaning they're likely to be sent back.

When the 670 million euro deal between Italy and Albania was agreed in November, it drew expressions of concern in Brussels that an EU nation was outsourcing its migration problem.

But just this week EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has raised the idea of holding centres where failed asylum applicants from across the bloc could be sent.

This is about creating so-called return hubs in third countries with whom the European Union would have agreements.

And for migrants whose right to stay in the EU has been rejected, while they're waiting to be returned to the country that they came from.

The opening of the centres in Albania marks a paradigm shift in EU migration processing.

People making dangerous journeys trying to reach the EU may never actually set foot inside it.

DW correspondent Jack Parikh, he joins me now, he's following this story.

Jack, tell us more about how this deal works and exactly what is Albania supposed to get out of it?

Well, this is the interesting thing.

As we've seen the details, the practical realities of this detention centre deal between Italy and Albania materialise, what we're seeing is that really Albania takes the money, they've created the land for these centres, these two centres to be put together, but that Italy will actually do the rest, bring them in on the Italian Coast Guard boats, move them and process them within the centre in the port, then hold them in the centre slightly further inland, and then if the applications are denied, they will hold them in another part of that centre and then send them back to their countries of origin.

So it really is Italy doing the sort of legwork of this, but it's a big issue that that sort of processing, that asylum processing is now being done by an EU country in an outside of the EU country.

Yeah, you say Italy is doing the legwork here.

I'm just wondering how many other legs could be involved in this?

I mean, do you think other EU countries are going to follow suit?

Well, this is the really interesting thing.

The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, she put out a 10-point plan last week, talking about how to deal with migration.

And one of the things that she suggested, there's been a whole overhaul of EU asylum policy and processes.

But one of the things she's now suggesting is that when people are refused asylum within a European Union country, that potentially they could be sent to a similar, not the same, but a similar sort of centre outside of the EU and held there before they're moved on to their country of origin.

Now, that's already created a bit of discussion.

The Spanish, for instance, have said that that wouldn't be okay.

The Spanish Prime Minister indicated that.

We are right in the middle of a sort of bumper set of summits here in Brussels, today with Gulf countries and tomorrow and the next day, just EU countries.

And this issue will be firmly on the agenda for the leaders.

They will be discussing where they land on this.

Is this really a shift towards a way that the EU starts dealing with its migration outside in partner countries like Albania?

And this deal, do you think this deal is the right step in the direction of solving what is considered to be a migration crisis in Europe?

Yeah, well, this is the other thing, Brent.

It's interesting to talk about this, because when we talk about processing 36,000 migrants per year, when you look at the numbers, say, of the height of what was called the EU's crisis, over a million migrants entered the European Union.

So if we're talking numbers, this helps the look for Italy.

It means that they can sort of make it look like the migrants aren't coming into Italian soil.

It's a good voter issue as far as Giorgia Maloney's anti-immigration government is concerned.

But practically, how many people this is, it's not a huge number, Brent.

All right, our correspondent Jack Parrock with the latest.

Jack, thank you.