BERLIN • Germany’s socially liberal 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 in a video message 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.

He said that “Germany needs better rules for the naturalization of all these great women and men.” The overhaul of citizenship rules is one of a series of modernizing reforms that Scholz’s three-party coalition agreed to tackle when it took office last December. —