Europe close: Italian stocks bounce back with a vengeance

Stocks across the Continent rose slightly on Tuesday, apparently buoyed by hopes that the White House's plans to slap tariffs on imports of steel and aluminium might finally be curtailed or watered down in one way or another.

Significantly too, according to South Korean officials, Pyongyang might be willing to restrict its nuclear weapons programme if it obtains security guarantees.

By the close of trading, the benchmark Stoxx 600 had edged higher by 0.13% or 0.50 points to 371.37, alongside an advance of 0.19% or 23.0 points to 12,113.87 on the German Dax and a rise of 0.06% or 3.0 points to 5,170.23 for the Cac-40.

In parallel, Milan's FTSE Mibtel bounced back sharply from the prior day's election-inspired losses, even as strategists at Credit Suisse downgraded the country's equities from 'benchmark' to 'underweight', citing their roughly 5% advance since December.

According to the Swiss broker, the risk of a so-called Italexit or a sovereign a default were both extremely low.

However, they added, "We have not had a single question on Italy this year, and we have seen how political uncertainty has the ability to drive investor disengagement in the case of UK equities over the last 18 months or so."

In the view of economists at Credit Suisse, the most likely outcome was a coalition government between the centre-left PD and the 5Star party, with the latter having recently commited to respecting the 3% budget deficit ceiling required by the European Union.

Back on the international trade front, reports on Tuesday afternoon were indicating that White House economic adviser Gary Cohn was set to lead talks between the Trump administration and key US industry figures aimed at curtailing or blocking the introduction of any tariffs.

However, there were also reports that Cohn might be set to table his resignation.

Acting as a backdrop, overnight officials in Brussels had discussed a list of $2.8bn-worth of goods imported from the States on which the European Union would impose retaliatory tariffs of 25% if the US president pushed ahead with his plans.

No major economic reports were published in Europe on Tuesday.

On the company front, citing industry sources, Reuters reported that Airbus was shooting to triple services revenues form its commercial aircraft unit.

In parallel, Volskwagen's chief reportedly said the manufacturer was pondering a stock sale of its truck and bus division in a bid to boost the manufacturer's efficiency.