Salut Gilbert,
a brief summary of the benefits, limits and expectations of chapters can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Chapter_Summary_Matri...
Apart from that has every chapter a Chapter Agreement which has more details.
On top of that additional requirements and expectations are set by the programs a chapter participates in or benefits from, e.g. PEG or FDC.
This means that requirements and tasks of some chapters are smaller (eg. if they are small, work with only with the money they raise themselves) or bigger (eg. for chapters participating in FDC or take in grants).
In the case of de-recognitions the AffCom and the WMF work with these chapters long before. Problems / incompliance is noted and discussed, chapters are asked to come up with plans how to fix this. AffCom and WMF also provide help and a lot of patience in getting things sorted. Just when these plans don't work out or chapters are completely unwilling to fix things or come up with any plans then a series of deadlines will be applied to get things going - either in one direction or another.
As Maor has written in an earlier statement of the AffCom a few days ago there have been several such processes going on over the last year. So everyone involved is very much aware of what is going on, it will be no suprise to anyone affected.
Of course such issues are delicate and there is always the hope and the goal to fix problems so things never come to an end like this and must not been taken to the public. Things sometimes do go wrong and nobody wants to publicly blame or shame someone or even a group. Every chapter in trouble is encouraged to scale down to a user group and try again in a smaller, easier to handle environment. When they can be successful and sustainable in that way then the path to become a chapter later and matured is always still open.
It is not about punishing people or anything towards chapters in general. It is just ultimately enforcing the rules and agreements which are in place and had been the foundation of being a chapter, receiving grants etc.
/Manuel