PRAGUE, July 24 (Reuters) - The Czech crown on Monday hit its lowest point against the euro since the start of 2023, on expectations interest rates will fall in the second half of the year, while other central European currencies squeezed out further gains.

Poland's zloty clung close to a more than 2-1/2-year high while Hungary's forint firmed a second consecutive day despite souring sentiment on European markets as business activity data in some euro zone markets showed contractions.

In the Czech Republic, the crown continued a week-long slide past the psychological 24 per euro level. It had fallen 0.2% in the day to 24.09 by 0948 GMT, off a session low of 24.105, which was its weakest since Jan. 3.

The falls - totalling 1.4% since last Tuesday - come after Czech National Bank Vice-Governor Eva Zamrazilova told a parliamentary committee last week that monetary conditions were tight enough and the question was when the central bank should start easing policy.

While the central bank has kept debate on a rate hike on the table, markets are counting on the start of policy loosening by the end of the year. Dovish central bank comments like Zamrazilova's have helped the crown wipe out its gains this year. The crown had been trading at a 15-year high of 23.23 per euro in April.

Markets were also looking towards the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank meetings this week.

"If those central banks were to surprise on the hawkish side this week, more crown losses could come," CSOB said.

In central Europe, Hungary's central bank meets on Tuesday and is expected to continue its policy loosening steps with a 100-basis-point cut to its one-day deposit rate while keeping its base rate at 13%, the highest in the European Union.

The forint was up 0.2% on Monday at 379.0 to the euro and the zloty was up the same at 4.456 to the euro, while Romania's leu added 0.2% to hover off a two-month high.

On stock markets, Warsaw rose 0.9% while other bourses struggled for gains.

"We have an extremely intense week ahead of us, which, due to the multitude of potential impulses, has a chance to increase the volatility of various asset classes after the stagnation of the last few days," Bank Millennium said.

"The meetings of the Fed and the ECB should be considered the most important events."

(Reporting by Jason Hovet in Prague, Pawel Florkiewicz in Warsaw and Gergely Szakacs in Budapest; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)