Grégoire Roos
Role at the time: Director of the Europe and Russia and Eurasia programmes at Chatham House
Statement summary
Chatham House’s Grégoire Roos wrote that associate membership is a political expression rather than a legal category and that Canada fails the geographical test in Article 49, while arguing that Article 217 association agreements could deliver most of what is envisaged without treaty change.
“At this stage the ‘associate member’ status remains a political expression rather than a legal category. Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union says that any European state may apply for EU membership. Canada does not meet that geographical requirement.”
Why we used this label
On Roos disputes the description on which the proposal rests rather than the desirability of closer ties: he argues the status named does not exist in the treaties and that Canada could not qualify under the membership article in any event. He does not oppose the project, and in fact supplies a route to most of its substance through Article 217, which is why “Condemned” does not fit. His position is the most specified answer available to the question of whether the proposal is legally possible, and it cuts both ways — against the label, for the substance.