European stocks open higher before EU summit
LONDON: European stock markets rose at the start of trading on Thursday, as investors awaited an emergency eurozone summit on a new bailout for Greece amid a spreading eurozone debt crisis.
London's benchmark FTSE 100 index climbed 0.23 percent to 5,867.35 points, Frankfurt's DAX 30 advanced 0.60 percent to 7,264.98 points and in Paris the CAC 40 gained 0.41 percent to 3,769.86.
Ahead of the summit's start, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the eurozone's key players, agreed on a "common position" after late-night talks in Berlin.
The French government said the agreement was a precondition to ending the eurozone debt crisis.
"It was an indispensable precondition to reassure our partners," government spokeswoman Valerie Pecresse told France 2 television.
"We must build the widest possible consensus and the first building block of that consensus, is obviously a common position" between France and Germany, she added.
Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011
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