On: Germany's Merz pitches 'associate' EU membership for Ukraine

The headline sits on the page. “Associate membership.” “Interim membership.” “Full membership.” A family of words, but what is the game? They are arranging the chairs, but I ask: what is the grammar of this chair? They speak of a thing, a status called “membership,” and then they qualify it. Associate. Interim. Full. As if “membership” were a substance that could be diluted or concentrated, like water and wine. But what is the use? What do we do when we say a country is a “member”? We look at treaties, at laws, at voting procedures, at the movement of goods. That is the practice. That is the language-game, played within a form of life.

Now they propose a new move: all the practices of one game, but without the central piece. The king that cannot move. “Membership without voting rights.” Does this clarify or confuse? It is like saying “a game of chess where the king cannot be checked.” You have all the pieces, the board, the turns - but the point, the practice that gives the word “chess” its life, is removed. What remains is a different game, with a superficial resemblance. They call it “chess” to ease the transition, but the grammar has shifted. The word is kept for its comfort, while its use is hollowed out.

They want to say “Ukraine is a member” and also “Ukraine is not a member.” The grammatical contradiction is smoothed over with an adjective: “associate.” The fly is now in the bottle. The solution is not to find the correct definition of “associate membership,” but to look at what is actually being proposed. What specific practices change? Which doors open, which remain locked? Describe that. The anxiety comes from treating “membership” as a single, essential thing one either has or lacks, rather than as a complicated weave of practices and agreements. There is no essence of membership to be diluted. There are only specific rights and obligations. List them, and the philosophical problem - “What is associate membership?” - evaporates. The political difficulty remains, of course. But at least it will be a real difficulty, not a ghost conjured by grammar.