Hungary and Slovakia do not currently run the risk of a shortage of oil despite the interruption of Russian deliveries from a key pipeline running through Ukraine, the EU said Wednesday.
Alternative sources were keeping them in supplies, said an EU spokesman after a meeting of experts to discuss the situation.
Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Wednesday that Ukraine had again postponed the resumption of oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline from Thursday to March 3, slamming the delay.
Both Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban have accused Ukraine of deliberately dragging its feet over re-opening the pipeline, which Kyiv says was damaged by Russian strikes in January.
Orban, one of the few EU leaders who is close to Russia's President Vladimir Putin, has vetoed a 90-billion-euro ($106-billion) EU loan to Ukraine as well as a fresh round of sanctions on Russia until Kyiv re-opens it.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that the repairs were not yet finished.
He suggested Budapest take up the matter with Moscow, which he said had bombed the pipeline several times as part of its air campaign against Ukraine's infrastructure.
Hungary and Slovakia have been forced to start drawing on their emergency stocks of oil, which are limited to three months of imports.
But they do have other sources of supply, such as the Adria pipeline that passes through Croatia, said European Commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen following the experts' meeting.
"Croatia confirmed at the meeting that non-Russian crude oil is being transported through the Adria pipeline to Hungary and Slovakia," she said.
"It remains the main alternative pipeline for Hungary and Slovakia to cover their needs, and the pipeline has sufficient capacity to increase volumes to fully cover the Hungarian Slovakian requirements."
It was still not clear, however, what it would take to persuade Hungary to lift its veto on the EU loan to Ukraine, although high-level talks were ongoing, she added.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday the bloc would make good on the loan "one way or the other," despite the opposition from Budapest.
"We have different options, and we will use them," she said.
Both Hungary and Slovakia have said they need Russian oil or energy prices would increase in their countries.