Kosovo’s parliament approved on Thursday a deal to lease 300 jail cells to Denmark as aid to the Scandinavian country’s overcrowded prisons problem. Signed in 2021, the deal only became a treaty in April 2024. It excludes Danish nationals and mentally-ill convicts and allows only foreigners convicted in Denmark to be sent to Kosovo.

The draft was introduced in front of lawmakers by the Minister of Economy Artane Rizvanolli and voted 86-7, with no abstentions. It will give Denmark around 300 cells in the town of Gjilan, located in the eastern part of the country and close to the border with Serbia.

According to the Minister of Economy, the goal of the treaty is to further strengthen the relations between Denmark and Kosovo, and for Kosovo to financially benefit from such agreements. Kosovo will be paid around 200 million euros over the next decade, with the money to be used on improving the country’s correctional institutions and as funding for renewable energy projects.

This is the second time within two weeks that the deal was put up for a vote, as the ratification could not pass last week. During the first vote, it lacked the necessary votes from the opposition, as a two-thirds majority is required by the Parliament to pass new international agreements. The votes were secured after the meeting between the Prime Minister and the leader of one of the two major opposition parties.

The deal resembles the agreement between neighboring Albania and the UK last year, where hundreds of Albanian prisoners were sent to their home country’s prisons, in exchange for British support in modernizing Albania’s prison system.