Europe close: Stocks little changed ahead of vote in UK Parliament

The region's main stockmarket indices finished the session on a mixed note as investors braced for the outcome of Tuesday evening's vote in Parliament on the British Prime Minister's new proposals for withdrawing from the European Union.

Despite the odds apparently being stacked against Theresa May, possibly paving the way for some form of softer Brexit, analysts remained wary of trying to call what the final result would be, including another general election or even a second referendum.

"A three-month extension to negotiations, yielding a cross-party consensus for a soft Norway-style Brexit, is our base case, so we do not expect to revise our economic forecasts if Mrs. May loses the second meaningful vote," said Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

"We expect no meaningful pick-up in GDP growth until Q3. That said, we do not have a crystal ball and many uncertainty-prolonging alternatives—including a second referendum or another general election—still are in play."

By the end of trading, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was edging lower by 0.06% to 373.25, alongside a drop of 0.03% for the FTSE Mibtel to 20,631.19, while the German Dax was off by 0.17% at 11,524.17.

In parallel, euro/dollar was adding 0.43% and changing hands at 1.12921 on the back of a weaker-than-expected reading on US consumer prices for February.

Trading in Sterling was quite active, amid large swings in the pound as traders reacted to the incoming news headlines.

Earlier, the UK Attorney General had said that the legal risk from the Irish backstop "remained unchanged", sending the pound speedily to an intraday low against the euro of 1.1555, after having risen as high as 1.1791 in overnight trades as traders priced-in a vote against May.

It was last changing hands at 1.1590.

Brent crude oil futures meanwhile were moving higher, adding 0.21% to $66.72 a barrel on the ICE.

To take note of, and also overnight, Chinese state-owned news agency, Xinhua, reported that the US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, and his opposite number in Beijing, had held a telephone call on Tuesday morning to plan for the next stage of work.

In economic news, Portuguese harmonised CPI for February was confirmed at up by 0.9% year-on-year, versus an advance of 0.6% during the prior month.

On the corporate front, shares of Credit Bank of Moscow were a smidgen higher after the lender, one of Russia's top three private bank, posted a 31.5% jump in full-year 2018 net profits to RUB27.2bn.