Brussels  - The European Union should ease its rules to allow new members to swap their national currency for the euro more rapidly, Hungary's prime minister said Tuesday.

"The best protection against foreign-exchange problems is to join the eurozone ... We should see how the steps towards the euro could be made quicker," Ferenc Gyurcsany told journalists in Brussels.

In particular, countries which have met the EU's strict rules on inflation and budget discipline should be allowed to join the single currency without having to spend two years in the preparatory Exchange Rate Mechanism 2 (ERM 2), he said.

Budapest  - The Monetary Policy Council of Hungary's central bank announced on Monday morning t

Budapest  - Hungary's Prime Minister vowed on Monday to double power production at his country's sole nuclear power plant, in the wake of January's gas spat between Russia and Ukraine.

Ferenc Gyurcsany cited improving Hungary's energy security situation as he urged lawmakers in the Budapest parliament to back his scheme to expand the plant at Paks, the country's only nuclear reactor, this year.

Analysts said the expansion could only be funded by foreign investors, as the government is currently in dire financial straits.

Budapest  - Hungary's socialist government presented a new tax package to parliament on Monday which it hopes will make the country one of the most competitive in the region.

Corporate tax will be raised from 16 to 19 per cent, but because a "solidarity" tax on company profit will be scrapped, the de facto rate will fall from 20 to 9 per cent.

Vienna  - The West Nile virus, which can cause meningitis in humans, has reached Austria, an virologist said Friday in Vienna.

Birds carrying the virus were detected in Austria for the first time last year, Norbert Nowotny, a professor at the Vienna University of Veterinary Medicine, told Austrian press agency APA.

The disease was imported from Hungary last summer, but only birds in eastern Austria fell ill. No humans were infected by the disease which is spread by mosquitos.

Budapest - The Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority (HSFA) has fined the London-based bank HSBC for violating local laws in a bond trading deal last October.

The regulatory body announced on its website that it had imposed a fine of 80 million forints (350,000 dollars) on the bank for breaking local laws on manipulating the market.

The financial watchdog found that HSBC had offered for sale a large volume of Hungarian government bonds on October 10 last year, a move which led to rise in the yield of the bonds.