Europe close: Stocks slip as China stimulus underwhelms

Stocks on the Continent finished lower as investors pondered the potential for further interest rate hikes, both in the euro area and in the States.

Investor sentiment was also dented by smaller-than-expected rate cuts overnight by the People's Republic of China.

Against that backdrop, the pan-European Stoxx 600 was off by 0.59% to 459.32 and Germany's Dax by 0.55% at 16,111.32.

Spain's Ibex 35 was the exception on the Continent, edging up 0.08% to 9,439.80.

The Stoxx 600 gauge of Basic Resources companies' shares was particularly weak, giving back 2.21% to 557.61.

Front-dated Brent crude oil futures fell 0.96% to $75.13 a barrel on the ICE and the euro was off a tad at 1.0906 against the US dollar.

The day before, ECB governing council member, Isabel Schnabel, had termed the path towards sustained price stability as uncertain and fraught with risks.

ECB chief economist, Philip Lane, meanwhile had told an audience in Madrid that a further hike in July was likely but that it remained to soon to predict the outcome of September's meeting.

Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, was scheduled to deliver a speech the next day.

Elsewhere on the economic front, Destatis reported a 1.4% month-on-month decline in German producer prices in May so that the annual rate of increase ebbed from April's 4.1% to 1.0%.

The euro area's current account surplus shrank in April to €4.0bn, against €31bn during the month before.

On a trailing 12-month basis, the current account slipped into a deficit of €55bn or 0.4% of the single currency bloc's GDP, against a surplus equal to 1.1% of GDP a year earlier.