Europe close: Stocks edge up as countries ease lockdowns slightly, short-selling banned
Updated : 18:20
Stocks across the Continent finished mostly higher, helped by news that Germany was set to start slowly lifting some of its restrictions on the movement of people.
From 4 May, the country's schools would slowly start to reopen and small shops would be allowed to open their doors, although large gatherings would be banned until 31 August.
The day before, Austria, Italy and Spain had also announced a slight easing in their own lockdowns and some reports indicated the US would soon announce a timetable for similar moves.
"Equity markets are higher today as Germany has become the latest European country to set out plans to gradually re-open some aspects of its economy," said David Madden, senior market analyst at CMC Markets UK.
In a further boost for shares, overnight regulators in France, Spain, Austria, Belgium and Greece announced that bans on short-selling shares would be extended until mid-March.
By the end of trading the benchmark Stoxx 600 was 0.58% higher at 324.92, alongside a 0.21% advance for the German Dax to 10,301.54 while the FTSE Mibtel was ahead by 0.29% to 16,768.14.
Front month Brent crude oil futures meanwhile were 1.43% lower to $27.29 a barrel on the ICE.
Euro/dollar meanwhile fell 0.6% to 1.0844.
Acting as a backdrop, the number of Covid-19 infections in Europe had jumped to nearly 1.0m on Thursday, prompting the World Health Organisation's director for Europe, Hans Kluge, to warn that before lifting any lockdown measures countries needed to ensure that transmission of the virus was under control and that health systems had the capacity to identify, test, trace and isolate cases.
There was little in terms of fresh news on the economic side of things.
Germany's ministry of finance confirmed that consumer prices in the country edged up at a month-on-month pace of 0.1% in March and by 1.3% year-on-year.
At the euro area level meanwhile, Eurostat reported a 1.9% year-on-year decline in the bloc's industrial production in February.