Government seeks to ease rules for naturalization

BERLIN » Germany’s government is moving ahead with plans to ease the rules for obtaining citizenship in the European Union’s most populous country, a drive that is being assailed by the conservative opposition. Chancellor OIaf Scholz said Saturday that Germany has long since become “the country of hope” for many, and it’s a good thing when people who have put down roots in the country decide to take citizenship. The overhaul of citizenship rules is one of a series of modernizing reforms that the three-party coalition of Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats agreed to tackle when it took office last December. The Interior Ministry said on Friday that draft legislation is “as good as ready.”