The European Union has a chance to make real yards on the next expansion of the bloc for the first time in years. Miss the opportunity and it might not come around again for a long time. A bumper year of elections in 2027 across four of Europe’s biggest powers, however, could see that window slam shut.

There’s the big one in the spring. The presidential poll in France where Marine Le Pen‘s Eurosceptic, far-right National Rally has a strong chance of claiming the keys to the Élysée.

Parliamentary elections in Italy could pull prime minister Giorgia Meloni further to the right, both on the campaign trail and, more importantly, in any coalition negotiations that ensue.

There are also elections in Poland pitting prime minister Donald Tusk against the populist Law and Justice party and far-right forces, while in Spain Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing government faces a serious challenge from the right-wing People’s Party and far-right Vox.

Those national votes could see a tectonic shift in the balance of power inside the EU. That’s part of the reason Brussels wants to get a rush on several big decisions, such as the bloc’s next seven-year budget and enlargement.

Countries in the western Balkans want to join the club. So do Ukraine and Moldova. However, centrist governments are wary that surging far-right and populist forces will tap into voters’ anxiety about letting new members into the EU.

Montenegro is hurrying to complete the remaining “chapters” of internal reforms that the EU sets as the precondition for membership. The small Balkan front-runner hopes to finish that work in the coming months.

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Ukraine is at the start of what is a years-long process. Kyiv has been permitted to open two of the six “clusters” of negotiating chapters and wants the go-ahead to kick off the rest.

Every step on a candidate country’s journey needs to be okayed by all existing member states; the delicate political arithmetic involving 27 different governments is forever in flux.

It is the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, that judges how candidate countries are getting on. Ursula von der Leyen and co want to press ahead and get Ukraine’s bid moving.

Kyiv’s membership ambitions had been blocked by Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán, until the populist was displaced by Péter Magyar in a landslide electoral victory this April. Magyar is patching up relations between Brussels and Budapest and has assented to Ukraine moving a few rungs up the accession ladder, but slowly.

That breakthrough, coupled with Montenegro and Albania ticking off reforms, has meant there has been more movement recently than any time “in the last 25 years,” European commissioner for EU enlargement Marta Kos said on Friday.

The commission wants greater safeguards that would apply to new entrants, to make sure countries continue to respect the rule of law once they are inside the tent.

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European leaders should make a greater effort to allay citizens’ “fears” about expanding the union again, Kos told reporters in Dublin Castle, where European affairs ministers were talking about enlargement on Friday.

Minister of State for European affairs Thomas Byrne, who chaired the meeting, said he wasn’t overly worried about big elections on the horizon.

“Elections are unpredictable … Campaigns change things. We’ve just got to get on with the work that’s here today,” he said.

There’s a push to open the remaining “clusters” governing Ukraine and Moldova’s negotiations and perhaps even conclude talks with Montenegro, all by the end of this year. The top table of Europe’s political leaders could start to look a lot different beyond that point.