True Left

Smallest German governing party stalls on citizenship reform

BERLIN (AP) — Senior members of the smallest party in Germany’s coalition government are seeking to hit the brakes on plans to ease the rules for obtaining German citizenship, arguing Monday that the government must first do more to ensure that people who are in the country illegally are deported.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, a member of his center-left party, have signaled in recent days that they're keen to move ahead quickly with liberalizing the rules — one of a series of modernizing reforms that Scholz's three-party coalition agreed to tackle when it took office nearly a year ago.

But senior lawmakers with the pro-business Free Democrats, who tended to ally with the center-right bloc before joining Scholz's coalition last year and who are now struggling in the polls, have pushed back on that plan.