The euro met with minimal hesitation at the key decision of the European Central Bank this week.

According to the data, the European Central Bank left the refinancing rate unchanged at 0.0%, while stating that interest rates will remain at current levels for a long time after the end of the asset purchase program.

Many experts expected that the ECB would make hints on the gradual tightening of monetary policy by the time of the completion of the curtailment of the asset repurchase program, which is scheduled for the end of next year. However, as we can see, this is not included in the plans of the ECB and there are a number of objective reasons for this. At the very least, this is the missing price pressure, which is kept quite low for quite a long time even after good economic growth in the second and third quarters of this year. The labor market in the euro area also shows growth but the rate of increase in wages is far from ideal.

The ECB also revealed that they will reinvest funds received from the redemption of bonds for a long period after the completion of the curtailment of the asset purchase program.

In the morning, preliminary data on the PMI supply managers' index for France's manufacturing sector for December came out. It rose significantly to 59.3 points versus 57.7 points in November. Economists had expected PMI for the manufacturing sector to be at 57.1 points.

A similar preliminary index of supply managers PMI for Germany's manufacturing sector for the month of December this year rose to 63.3 points against 62.5 points in November. Economists expected the index to fall to 62.1 points.

As for the euro area as a whole, the preliminary composite index of supply managers for the euro zone's PMI in December this year increased to 58.0 points with a forecast at 57.3 points, which is slightly lower than the November figure of 57.5 points.

In the second half of the day, data on the US labor market came out.

According to a report by the US Department of Labor, the number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits last week declined. Thus, the number of initial applications for unemployment benefits for the week of December 3 to 9 decreased by 11,000 and amounted to 225,000. Economists predicted that the number of applications would be at 235,000.