Europe midday: Stocks slip on Chinese data, poor prospects in Germany and Italy

Stockmarkets on the Continent have come off their worst levels of the session but continue to be mired in the red following the release of figures showing that both China's exports and imports hit two year-lows at the end of 2018.

Data on euro area industrial production released shortly afterwards underlined the impact that the slowdown in the world's second largest economy was having on the likes of Germany, in particular.

Commenting on the former, Josh Mahony at IG told clients: "European markets have started off the week in somewhat downbeat fashion, following on from a similarly bearish session overnight in Asia. The release of Chinese trade data has done little to help sentiment around both the Chinese growth story, and prospects of talks between the US and China."

Also dampening sentiment was investors' caution ahead of the parliamentary vote the next day on the Prime Minister's Brexit plans, as well as a mixed set of quarterly earnings out of US banking giant Citigroup.

As of 1304 GMT, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was down by 0.72% or 2.47 points at 346.73, alongside a fall of 0.71% or 33.43 points to 4,747.91 for the Cac-40 and a decline of 1.03% or 198.95 points to 19,091.20 on the FTSE Mibtel.

In economic news, Eurostat reported that industrial production within the single currency bloc shrank at a month-on-month pace of 1.7% in November (consensus: -1.2%).

Following the release of those figures, and in a research note sent to clients, economists at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch told clients that Germany's economy was tracking towards a 'technical recession' - defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth - although they expected domestic demand to return the economy growth, albeit at a lower pace "as long as he global economy doesn't fall off a cliff".

BofA-ML also trimmed its projection for Italian GDP growth in 2019 from 0.6% to 0.2%, citing recent "disappointing" data flow.

As well, political uncertainty might linger well into the back half of 2019, they said, adding "don't expect a quiet 2019".