Overview

• He urged governments to use large, centralized accommodations from the outset of any refugee surge and called for stronger cooperation among the German states.
• He recalled Berlin’s escalation from about 1,000 arrivals a year in 2011 to roughly 1,000 a day in the summer of 2015, with long queues at the Lageso offices.
• He said the creation of the Landesamt für Flüchtlingsangelegenheiten in 2016 was the right corrective step after the crisis.
• He pointed to the 2022 arrival of many refugees from Ukraine as evidence that larger facilities improved processing and support.
• He warned that cultural and origin-related tensions inside shelters remain underestimated compared with concerns about room size.