During accession negotiations, an EU enlargement commissioner argued that Country X should not be recommended for candidate status because its judicial independence index score is 3.2 out of 10, whereas every current EU Member State had a score of at least 6.0 at the time of its own accession. The commissioner concluded that granting candidate status to Country X before it reaches a comparable score would undermine the rule-of-law conditionality that underpins EU enlargement policy.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the commissioner's argument depends?
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Negation test applied: if the index used today does NOT measure the same attributes or use the same methodology as the index applied to current Member States at accession, then comparing Country X's current score of 3.2 with the historical scores of Member States at accession is meaningless — they would not be measuring the same thing. The commissioner's comparative benchmark only holds if the measurements are commensurable. Choice B about deliberate interference vs. underdevelopment is irrelevant to the logical comparison — the argument would hold regardless of the cause of the low score. Choice C about post-accession decline would strengthen the argument about conditionality but is not a necessary assumption. Choice D about the purpose of conditionality is outside the argument's logical structure. Choice E about future improvement is not required — even if improvement were likely, the commissioner's point about the current benchmark could still stand.
