On Wednesday, the Euro continued to slide down and it eventually reached its lowest level in a year against the US dollar and other major currencies. The recent move in the currency is in accordance to the expectations that the European Central Bank will act soon to counter low growth and inflation.

Although, the prospect of future stimulus in the world's second largest economic bloc set out an optimistic wave throughout the stock markets, the European bourses are struggling to make much headway following two days of strong gains.

Adding on to the speculation of the European Central Bank, Italian Economy Minister, Pier Carlo Padoan, reported that Italy must lower its growth forecast for this year. Besides this, German consumer sentiment too fell for the first time since early last year.

ECB is facing a very tough time at making the market believe that it will bring inflation back up towards a number close to its target, but it will be somewhere below 2%.

Last week, Mario Draghi, the ECB president called in for more action on both the monetary and fiscal fronts. This move of his has the markets betting that a series of fresh steps could soon be coming up at the most by next week when the central bank's governing council is expected to meet.

Earlier, the weak, euro helped lift the U.S. dollar index to its highest level in 13 months at 82.698 before it eased back again. As for now, both the Italian and French markets were down around 0.1%.

Besides this ECB speculation, markets also keeping a close eye on the developments in Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko for one-on-one conversation.