Peter Nurse

Investor.com reports that European stock markets fell Monday, with investors still concerned by slowing global growth as well as the brisk tightening of central banks’ monetary policies to counter rising inflation.

By 4:20 AM ET (0820 GMT), the in Germany traded 1% lower, the in France fell 1.2%, and the U.K.’s dropped 0.8%.

European stocks plunged last week. The DAX, CAC 40 and FTSE 100 were down about 2% each. There are fears that the central bank will increase the interest rate aggressively to counter rising inflation. This could hurt economic growth for the months ahead.

Data earlier Monday showed China’s was the slowest since June 2020, while this week’s release of Germany’s and preliminary first quarter data from the U.K. are expected to point to slowing growth in two of Europe’s largest economies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been leading commemorations in Moscow for the victory of Soviet Union over Nazi Germany and attempted to defend his invasion against Ukraine.

The West was “preparing for the invasion of our land, including Crimea,” Putin said, according to a Reuters translation.

Adding to the political tensions, Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy suggested, in an interview with the Financial Times, that the European Union should seize Russia’s foreign exchange reserves to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

This is corporate news Deutsche Post (ETR:) stock slumped 7%, falling to the bottom of the , while Italian defense company Leonardo (BIT:) stock rose 3.3% with European countries looking to boost their defense spending in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Monday’s oil prices fell due to the European Union talks over the Russian embargo. This is expected to tighten world supplies.

Later this session, the European Union government will again meet to determine how countries which are heavily dependent on Russian energy such as Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, can deal with the planned ban on Russian crude oil. This proposal must be approved by all EU members.

The Group of Seven industrialized countries agreed over the weekend to an identical ban on Russian oil imports.

However, there still remain concerns over global oil demand, especially with China’s ongoing COVID lockdowns. Saudi Arabia, world’s largest oil exporter, reduced crude prices in Asia and Europe on Sunday.

At 4:20 AM ET futures had fallen 0.5% to $109.20/barrel while contract prices were down 0.4% at $112..00 For the second consecutive week, both benchmarks increased by 4%.

The price of gold fell 0.6% at $1,871.21/oz while it traded 0.3% higher at 1.0516.