* Little end in sight seen for euro's depreciation vs dollar
* Euro seen hitting $1.175 in a year, last seen in Dec 2005
* 1-in-5 chance of euro/dollar parity by year-end
* Sterling seen gaining more ground versus euro
By Andy Bruce
LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - The euro's brutal depreciation against the dollar shows little sign of abating over the next 12 months, according to a monthly Reuters poll of analysts who again took a cleaver to their forecasts.
Median predictions from the survey of more than 50 foreign exchange strategists showed the euro zone currency hitting $1.175 in a year's time, a depth last plumbed in December 2005.
The euro edged up above $1.22 on Thursday as a strong rebound in stock markets lent support to higher yielding currencies, but long-term sentiment towards the pan-European currency remains unmistakably bearish.
Punished by a crisis of confidence in markets over the euro zone's fiscal health, the euro shed over 7 percent against the dollar in May -- a performance so dreadful that no analyst in last month's poll came close to predicting it.
Respondents in the latest poll lopped at least 10 cents off each of their one-, three-, six- and twelve-month forecasts against the dollar, medians showed, making the sixth straight month of downgrades to the euro's outlook.
Still, a smaller sample gave just a one-in-five chance of the euro reaching parity with the dollar this year, and almost nobody thought European Central Bank would intervene directly in the currency market to prop up its currency this year.
"The evolution of the crisis has not only been a near-term negative for the euro, but signals poorly for its medium and longer-term future," said Meng Jiao of Bank of America-Merrill Lynch.
He added that the "disjointed" policymaking of the last month, which saw Germany introducing a ban on certain types of short-selling without consulting its euro zone peers, was also a bad sign for the euro.
The ECB's announcement that it would start buying euro zone government bonds to support ravaged markets came under fire in a May 21 poll of economists, who said it damaged the bank's credibility.
The central bank had long ruled out such a policy and its president, Jean-Claude Trichet, said only days before the May 10 announcement that it had not been discussed as an option at that month's policy meeting.
UNSTUCK AGAINST STERLING
Against sterling, itself seen as something of a basket case currency among G7 peers, forecasters again predicted steeper losses for the euro.
They sliced at least 3 pence off each one-, three-, six- and twelve month forecasts, leaving the euro trading at 83.3 pence in three months, 82.3 in six months and 81.3 in a year's time. The euro was trading at around 83.5 pence on Thursday.
"(UK) government policies should support sterling over the medium to longer term. EUR/GBP should continue to benefit from broad-based weakness in the euro going forward," said Alexandre Dolci at Societe Generale.
Only against the yen is the euro seen strengthening against a major currency.
Analysts expected the euro to head slightly higher to 115.6 yen in 12 months' time from its current level around 113.5, helped by a Japanese monetary policy that is expected to remain ultra-loose for the foreseeable future.
The euro should be less volatile against the dollar in June after a tumultuous May that no-one in last month's poll saw coming, according to calculations derived from the standard deviation of forecasts in the survey.
The poll implied annualised volatility easing to 13.1 percent in June from actual volatility of 17.7 percent seen in May, the highest since January 2009.
Although reduced, 13.1 percent represents a hefty dose of uncertainty and comments about the euro were uniformly downbeat.
"While the fiscal woes in Southern Europe continue to weigh heavily on the single currency, spare dollar liquidity and higher USD libor rates add more downward pressure on EUR/USD," said Niels Christensen at Nordea.
"Most speculative accounts regard bounces in EUR/USD as selling opportunities." (Polling by Bangalore Polling Unit, Editing by Toby Chopra)