EU individual paragraph

HOW CAN A COUNTRY JOIN THE EU?

1st DRAFT 

To join the EU, any country seeking membership has to meet the Copenhagen Criteria. These accession criteria were set up by the Copenhagen European Council in 1993 and describe the requirements a country has to fulfill in order to become part of the EU. A new member State must show political stability, a guarantee of democracy, the rule of law and the and protection of human rights and minorities. Next to that, the state has to prove the existence of a functioning market economy which is able to deal with competitive pressure. The candidate country has to accept the obligations and intentions of the EU and therefore take on a subordinate role. Any European country that meets this criteria is allowed to join the EU, but only the European Council and the Commission define whether a country is, geographically seen, European. Right now, Iceland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey are candidate countries whose applications are scrutinized in the light of the Copenhagen Criteria. 

[170 words]

FEEDBACK (thank you, Natasha!)

Natasha mentioned some things I should change in order to improve style, register and cohesion of my paragraph. It's funny how you can overlook your own mistakes all the time until somebody else points them out. 

Corrections:

To join the EU, any country seeking membership has to meet (change to "is required"?)  the Copenhagen Criteria. These accession criteria were set up by the Copenhagen European Council in 1993 and describe the requirements a country has to fulfill in order to become part of the EU. ("These requirements are.." cohesion!) A new member state (not capitalized!)  must show political stability, a guarantee of democracy, the rule of law and the and (don't know what happened here ... ) protection of human rights and minorities. Next to that, the state has to prove the existence of a functioning market economy which (change to "that") is able to deal with competitive pressure. The candidate country has to accept the obligations and intentions of the EU and therefore take on a subordinate role. Any European country that meets this criteria (change to sth. like "is willing to / is able to meet...)  is allowed to join the EU, but only the European Council and the Commission define whether a country is, geographically seen, European. Right now, Iceland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey are candidate countries whose applications are scrutinized in the light of the Copenhagen Criteria. 

I was also advised to put the sentence about the "geographic definition" up to the other requirements to get more structure in the whole paragraph. 

FINAL VERSION

To join the EU, any country seeking membership has to meet the Copenhagen Criteria. These accession criteria were set up by the Copenhagen European Council in 1993 and describe the requirements a new member state has to fulfill in order to become part of the EU. These requirements are political stability, a guarantee of democracy, the rule of law and protection of human rights and minorities. Next to that, the state has to prove the existence of a functioning market economy that is able to deal with competitive pressure. The candidate country has to accept the obligations and intentions of the EU and therefore take on a subordinate role. One obvious restriction is the fact that only European countries can join the EU, but only the European Council and the Commission define whether a country is, geographically seen , European. All in all, any country willing and able to satisfy these criteria is allowed to join the EU. Right now, Iceland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey are candidate countries whose applications are scrutinized in the light of the Copenhagen Criteria. 

[180 words]

Note: I was absent in week 3, so I received feedback only once.