Turkey should formally recognize the sovereignty of Cyprus as a condition to EU membership talks, whose outcome should be "privileged partnership", said Wolfgang Schäuble, Vice President of Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in an interview with a Polish daily. The CDU-CSU coalition is expected to make significant gains in the German elections scheduled for September 18. According to Schäuble, "the EU should not extend beyond the boundary that we call the European continent. Otherwise, people will stop identifying with it. And if so, Turkey, the vast part of which lies outside Europe, cannot belong to the Union."