Eurozone inflation has been falling steadily for almost all of the past 17 months and investors will be closely watching to see if price pressures continued to subside in April when that data is released on Tuesday.

Economists polled by Reuters forecast headline inflation in the bloc to remain flat at 2.4 per cent this month. Any overshoot could test traders’ confidence that the European Central Bank will start cutting interest rates in June, especially after hotter-than-forecast US inflation prompted them to scale back bets on the scale of Federal Reserve easing this year.

Recent business and consumer surveys show the eurozone economy is tentatively emerging from its recent stagnation and data on Tuesday is expected to show gross domestic product in the region expanded at a quarterly rate of 0.2 per cent in the three months to March.