Europe close: Stocks end on mixed note with trade and ECB in focus

Shares on the Continent finished mostly lower on the back of concerns that trade frictions with the US might worsen, strength in the euro throughout much of the day.

Overnight, Germany’s transatlantic coordinator warned that Europe should prepare for US tariffs over aircraft subsidies, the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline and European car imports over the next few months.

And on Thursday afternoon a tweet by the US President saying that he hoped that China would soon begin purchasing US agricultural exports, amid contradictory reports regarding China's intentions on the subject, dented investor sentiment further.

Against that backdrop, the benchmark Stoxx 600 drifted lower by 0.12% to 386.70 and the German Dax was down by 0.33% to 12,332.12, although Milan's FTSE Mibtel managed to eke out a gain of 0.56% to 22,169.42 and Spain's Ibex 35 was up by 0.30% to 9,280.30.

Reversing early strength, euro/dollar finished the session flat at 1.12525.

The ECB policy meeting minutes, which were released shortly after midday appeared to be, if anything, perhaps slightly less dovish than anticipated.

They showed that policymakers were open to taking more "strategic" decisions might be warranted (a likely reference to a shift towards a symmetric inflation target) should "the environment of too low inflation continue to prevail" and that policymakers "needed to be ready and prepared to ease the monetary policy stance further".

However, in the minutes the ECB also broached the possibility that "technical factors" might be impacting on the information content of market-based measures of inflation expectations, although it warned against any complacency.

According to analysts at ING, the minutes did show the central bank's clear "determination to do more", but also showed that the decisions taken by the Governing Council in June were not unanimous and that there were some disagreements about how exactly to proceed.

Economic data was otherwise mixed, with Germany's Federal Office of Statistics marking up its preliminary reading for harmonised consumer prices in the euro area's largest economy in June.

The year-on-year rate of German harmonised CPI was revised higher to show an advance of 1.5%, instead of the 1.3% gain that had been initially calculated.

Further south, in France, INSEE confirmed that harmonised CPI rose at a 1.2% year-on-year clip, versus 0.9% in May.