BUCHAREST, May 4. /TASS/. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier admitted that attempts to build the Common European Home failed. He made this statement at a press conference after the talks with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis in Bucharest. The press conference was livestreamed on Iohannis’ website.
"We all supported the great concept, proposed by Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s about building the Common European Home," he noted. "However, we have to state today that these efforts have failed. It does not mean that attempts to participate in this building were wrong."
"The political support that I provided to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was a mistake, an erroneous assessment," Steinmeier added.
The German President also commented on his failed visit to Ukraine.
"The visit to Kiev was not only planned, but also prepared," he said. "I wanted to go to Kiev, together with Polish President [Andrzej Duda] and presidents of Baltic States to express our common European solidarity."
"I learned that this would be undesirable, but, despite that, we Germans support Ukraine with all our hearts, and Germany is a country that provides the largest financial, economic and military support to Ukraine," the President underscored.
Answering a question about the sixth package of anti-Russian sanctions, Steinmeier admitted that "the German economy used to receive most energy from Russia in the past."
"The share [of Russian energy] is being reduced significantly," he said. "And, currently, if I remember the latest numbers, the dependency on Russian oil is about 15%."
He noted that he is unaware of concrete proposals contained in the sixth package of anti-Russian sanctions, but expressed his certainty that "it will be specified in the upcoming days."
The German President has a meeting planned with Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca, as well as with Ukrainian students of a Bucharest lyceum and representatives of German and Jewish minorities in Romania.