Europe open: Stocks edge higher as investors digest Fed minutes, French politics

Europe's main stock market benchmarks saw slight gains at the start of trading on Thursday as traders digested the minutes of the US central bank's most recent policy meeting, released overnight, and the latest news on the French political front.

As of 0853 GMT the Stoxx 600 was edging higher by 0.01% to 373.40, the Dax was gaining 0.03% at 12,002.64 and the FTSE Mibtel was 0.13% ahead to 18,910.03.

Euro/dollar was off 0.12%, retracing a part of the prior day's gains on the back of a less hawkish than feared set of Fed minutes.

"The FOMC minutes published yesterday show many participants expressing the view that it might be appropriate to raise interest rates again 'fairly soon'. However, there were only 'a few participants' arguing that a hike could come 'potentially at an upcoming meeting'. This suggests no hike in March," analysts at Unicredit said.

Indeed, following those minutes the implied odds of a March interest rate hike by the Fed were back at 32% after having risen to as high as 45% the week before.

Also under the spotlight, on Wednesday evening French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron accepted an offer from centrist Francois Bayrou - who was then polling at roughly 5.0% of support - to create an alliance between their two parties.

Germany's economy expanded at a 0.4% quarter-on-quarter clip over the three months to March, as expected by economists, and at a 1.2% year-on-year pace.

Domestic demand in the form of greater spending from both the public and private consumer sectors.

In other news, France´s business climate improved in February to its best level since mid-2011.

INSEE's manufacturing sector index rose to 107.0 from 106.0 in the month before (consensus: 106.0).

Shares in Barclays jumped to their best level in over a year as the lender's capital ratio increased more than forecast, although at 330m pounds its fourth quarter pretax profits undershot market forecasts.

Aerospace engineering group BAE Systems saw full-year profits rise 13% on th eback of increased US military spending.

Glencore clocked in with a 48% increase in annual profits on the back of higher commodity prices.