The first group of 15 migrants were flown to Malta this morning as part of the EU's relocation programme agreed late last year.

The migrants, all Eritreans, arrived from Italy. They were greeted by government officials and NGOs.

The asylum seekers will be hosted at the Marsa reception centre for around a week pending medical clearance before they will be given the right to apply for refugee status.

Malta will be getting a total of 189 refugees over two years as part of a plan to relocate 160,000 refugees around the EU through a system of mandatory quotas.

It is part of a controversial temporary plan that took months to hammer out, and it reflects the challenge that European Council President Donald Tusk calls a “delivery deficit.”

A series of daunting obstacles, both logistical and political, stand in the way of carrying out the EU's relocation plans, according to frustrated officials in Brussels, aid workers and migration experts.

After posing for pictures with the exhilarated migrants, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras last November had acknowledged that the initiative — Europe’s first concrete action to relocate some of the more than one million refugees and migrants who arrived in 2015 — was “a drop in the ocean.”