Europe open: Stocks bounce back, ECB-speakers in focus

In remarks to Fox News and NBC on Sunday, the White House's top economic and trade advisers indicated that Washington was moving forward in a measured way with China and were hoping to avoid a trade war.

Against that backdrop of 0915 BST, Germany's benchmark Dax index was 0.91% or 111.12 points higher to 12,352.39, alongside a gain of 87.50 points to 9,770.30 for Spain's Inex 35, together with a 0.57% gain for the French Cac-40 to 5,288.13.

Nevertheless, the response in China's English-language tabloid, Global Times, which is sometimes believed to be more or less aligned to government views, was not especially friendly, analysts at Rabobank pointed out.

An opinion piece carried by the Global Times read: "A strategic resolution is being established in China, which is to fight the Trump administration's trade aggression in the same way the country fought US troops during the Korean War (1950-53).

"The Korean War caused China much losses but it forced the US to sign on an armistice, damaging Washington's strategic arrogance and winning many years of strategic respect for Beijing."

That prompted analysts at the Dutch broker to muse: "how likely are these 'friends' (in reference to Donald Trump and Xi Jinping) to reach a paradigm-shifting market-opening deal that will effectively reorder a debt-soaked, overly-centralised, aggressively-mercantilist Chinese economy to the global market forces it resists so hard? Well, for an answer let's listen to President Xi, who speaks tomorrow."

Monday's economic calendar was quite light, but investors were set to keep a close eye on two key speeches, with one from European Central Bank vice-president Vitor Constancio scheduled for 1500 BST and another from its chief economist, Peter Praet at 1845 BST.

Also on the economic front, earlier Germany's Ministry of Finance reported that the country's trade surplus slipped from €21.2bn for January to €19.2bn in February (consensus: €20.1bn), as exports shrank by 3.2% month-on-month.

In reaction, Claus Visten, chief euro area economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics told clients: "Exports probably rebounded in March, but these data adds to the evidence that the German economy hit a brick wall in Q1."

Meanwhile, in company news, shares of Deutsche Bank were sharply higher after the lender named Christian Sewing as its new boss, replacing John Cryan.

Shares of Novartis were also climbing, erasing an early dip after the company unveiled plans to acquire US-based rival AveXis Inc. for $8.7bn.

Elsewhere, Deutsche Post's finance chief was quoted in the local press saying itsfreight unit needed to make significant improvements if it wanted to reach its 2020 targets.