ESSEN, Germany -- Leaders of the 12 European Union nations agreed yesterday to begin open-ended discussions next month about membership for six Eastern European countries without setting a timetable for any of them to join.
Top officials from all six Eastern European countries that now have association agreements with the European Union -- Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary -- met with the leaders at the Villa Hugel, a sprawling 19th-century hilltop palace.
By next June, the European Union said, it hoped to include the six countries plus the three Baltic republics and Slovenia in a series of studies and regular meetings on how to prepare them for membership in the world's largest trading and political cooperation group.
But with a total of 10 other formerly Communist Eastern European countries expected to want to join, and all of them likely to be a net drain on European resources in the beginning stages, the process is expected to take many years.
"It is important not to awaken any false expectations," said Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany, the host of the two-day summit gathering, which ended yesterday.
He and his fellow leaders did not spell out how much aid they expected to give the Eastern Europeans to prepare their economies and their legal systems for membership. It is expected to take at least $6.6 billion over the next five years.
At the insistence of France and Spain, the European Union leaders agreed to hold a conference with North African and Mediterranean countries next year to discuss a similar program of aid and closer relations.
Also attending the lunch yesterday were Austria, Finland and Sweden, which are to join the European Union on Jan. 1.
The European Union leaders carefully balanced their overture to Eastern Europe with assurances of "a sustained constructive dialogue and partnership with Russia on political and economic issues."
Russia has sharply criticized recent overtures to eastern countries by NATO, and, to a lesser extent, by the European Union.
Before any of the Eastern Europe ans or previous applicants such as Malta and Cyprus can be admitted, the leaders agreed here, they will have to find a way to have decisions in the enlarged European Union made more efficiently.
In 1996, the European Union is to review developments since it set out a plan for closer political union and possibly a common currency by the end of the decade.