Europe open: Fresh year-to-date highs for Stoxx 600 after Merkel wins in NRW

Buying pressure from the previous week is carrying through into Monday's session following news of a strong showing for Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU in elections in the country's most populous state at the weekend.

As of 0832 BST the benchmark Stoxx 600 was up by 0.05% to 396.49 and just above its year-to-date highs, alongside a rise of 0.27% for the Dax to 12,804.47 and gains of 0.38% for the FTSE Mibtel to 21,662.43.

Euro/dollar was advancing 0.05% at 1.0939.

Merkel's CDU came away with 33% of the ballots - 6.7 points more than in the prior elections - versus 31.2% for the centre-left SPD in Sunday's vote in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

"After a horrible 2016 in which a tide of political anger led to the UK's Brexit vote and swept Donald Trump to power in the US, the newsflow so far this year has been rather different. Anti-European populism seems to have peaked in the Eurozone," said Holger Schmieding at Berenberg.

The results of the vote pointed to a possibly even wider margin of victory for the CDU in September's parliamentary elections, he said.

On a related note, analysts at Deutsche Bank revised up their projections for euro area GDP growth in 2017 and 2018 from 1.3% and 1.5% to 1.8% and 1.6%, respectively.

"The euro area has absorbed high political uncertainty better than we expected, with GDP growth averaging almost 2% annualised in the last two quarters. With France having chosen Macron over Le Pen, the window has opened for us to update our forecasts," economists at Deutsche Bank said.

Acting as a backdrop, front month Brent crude futures were up by 1.85% to $51.80 per barrel on the ICE amid reports that Saudi Arabia and Russia had agreed to do "whatever it takes" to put a floor under prices.

On the conomic calendar for Monday, Greek and Portuguese first quarter gross domestic product figures were scheduled for release at 0900 BST, with a speech later in the day from European Central Bank chief economist Peter Praet likely to attract attention.

The agenda in the US was rather sparse too, with the Federal Reserve bank of New York's manufacturing gauge set for release at 1330 BST, followed by the NAHB's survey of homebuilder confidence at 1500 BST.

France's Bollore announced first-quarter revenue rose by 7.2% on the year.

Analysts at Barclays downgraded Telefonica to 'underweight' while their peers at Deutsche Bank bumped up their target on AstraZeneca from 5,350p to 5,700p.

Oil major Total was also in the news after signing a deal to search for oil and gas offshore Mauritania.

German power group RWE posted core earnings which were slightly ahead of forecasts.