By Alan Charlish

WARSAW, March 31 (Reuters) -The Hungarian forint EURHUF= slipped on Friday, as worries about Hungary's access to European Union funds and a larger-than-expected trade deficit weighed on sentiment.

Hungary had been due to pass legislation designed to address concerns over the rule of law by the end of March, which is needed to unlock up to 15.4 billion euros ($16.76 billion) in COVID-19 recovery funds. But on Thursday officials in Brussels struck a cautious tone on whether the country had done enough to get the cash.

The forint was 0.26% weaker against the euro at 381 at 0851 GMT.

"In practice there is no deadline at all, it was just an agreement that they will try to find a solution by the end of the first quarter... but some of the market players have a sense that it is some kind of hard deadline," said Peter Virovacz, senior economist at ING in Budapest.

Virovacz added that concerns related to this could have caused traders to close their forint positions.

Zoltan Varga, an economist at brokerage Equilor, also pointed to the issue of suspended EU funds, as well as an upward revision in Hungary's January trade deficit.

Meanwhile in Poland, the zloty EURPLN= was broadly stable at 4.6745, as investors shrugged off a decline in inflation in March.

Inflation was 16.2% year on year in March according to a flash estimate from the statistics office. This was above the 15.9% forecast in analysts in a Reuters poll, but marked a declined from the February reading of 18.4% which most economists believe marked the peak of the current cycle.

The Czech crown EURCZK= was also little changed at 23.52, after touching a three-week high against the euro on Wednesday after the central bank called market expectations of rate cuts premature.

Budapest's main stock index .BUX rose 1.4%, with shares of oil and gas group MOL MOLB.BU gaining 2%.

The main index in Prague .PX rose 0.3% while Warsaw's WIG 20 .WIG20 was broadly stable.

The biggest gainer in Warsaw was video games company CD Projekt CDR.WA, which rose as much as 9.8% in early trade after the company on Thursday said it would start a marketing campaign for the highly-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 expansion for June.

($1 = 0.9191 euros)

Reporting by Alan Charlish in Warsaw and Krisztina Than in Budapest; Editing by Christina Fincher

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