(Bloomberg) -- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he’s come around to support the European Union’s plan to jointly finance a 750 billion-euro ($850 billion) recovery fund but there’s still work to do to agree on its fair distribution.

Although the idea of taking on joint debt is “completely antithetical to the Hungarian way of thinking,” the EU must act, in particular to help out some southern members whose debt loads threaten to overwhelm them in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, Orban said in a state radio interview on Friday.

“I have to concede, even if I shudder at the thought of it, that this once, exceptionally, we have to use this tool,” Orban said. “But the money must be distributed fairly. You can’t swindle central Europe, we’re no fools.”

He said the leaders of the Visegrad countries, which also include the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, agreed on a joint position on the EU recovery fund at a meeting on Thursday. Negotiations between EU leaders will formally begin on June 19, though talks are expected to drag into July.

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