Seventy asylum-seekers will Wednesday fly to Finland and Sweden from Rome under a controversial plan to transfer 160,000 from Italy and Greece to other European Union countries over the next two years.
"The relocation plan is working: tomorrow another 70 migrants will leave Italy for Finland and Sweden," the Italian interior ministry said in a statement."
Interior minister Angelino Alfano will see off the 70 asylum-seekers from Rome's Ciampino airport aboard 9am flights, the statement added.
Alfano and EU immigration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos were at Ciampino on 9 October when 19 Eritrean asylum-seekers flew to Sweden - the first group to leave Italy under the EU plan.
Alfano and Avramopoulos hailed the Eritreans' transfer as "historic" and the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR called it "an important step toward stabilising the refugee crisis in Europe".
The 19 Eritreans had all arrived by boat in Sicily in recent weeks, had been screened and had agreed to be relocated to Sweden, according to UNHCR.
More than 613,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean this year to seek refuge in Europe and a million are expected to arrive, most in Greece and Italy, which are the first countries of entry.
At a summit in September, a majority of EU heads of government backed the refugee redistribution plan but it was strongly opposed by four eastern European countries.
