European stocks are set to open lower Thursday in the last full session before a four-day Easter Holiday break that comes amid rising geopolitical tensions in Asia and the Middle East that has hit risk sentiment in financial markets around the world.

Britain's FTSE 100 is likely to slip 15 points the opening bell, according to financial bookmakers IG, with a 32 point decline priced in to the DAX performance index and a 14 point all expected for the CAC-40 in Paris.

The declines, however, don't necessarily reflect the risk-averse sentiment that has been driving global markets for the past week, particularly in Asia, given the increasing combative tone in relations between North Korea and the United States. That said, stocks in the region were able to rise firmly into the end of the session, with the MSCI Asia ex-Japan index rising 0.58% by 06:45 BST, thanks in part for a slumping U.S. dollar.

The greenback tumbled to a multi-week low of 99.98 against a basket of its global peers, extending steep declines in Wednesday trading, after U.S. President Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal that the dollar is "getting too strong" and that he hoped the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates low as a result.

The comments, alongside the developing events in North Korea -- where foreign journalists have been told to prepare for an "important event" in the coming days -- pushed investors into the yen in overnight trading, taking it to a four-month high of 1.0883 against the U.S. dollar and pushing the benchmark Nikkei 225 deeply into negative territory. It also kept gold prices near recent five-month highs, with the bullion trading at $1284.44.

Global oil prices were also active, with traders reacting to much better-than-expected import data from China for the month of March, which showed a record 9.17 million barrels per day in crude imports. That typically translates into heftier domestic stockpiles and adds to increasing evidence that the world is awash with spare oil capacity despite the efforts of OPEC members -- along with Russia -- to take 1.8 million barrels of oil from the market each day in the first half of this year.

WTI futures for April delivery slipped 11 cents a barrel to $53.01 as European markets began to assume control while Brent contracts for the same month, the global benchmark, fell 6 cents per barrel to $56.80.

Wall Street is, for the moment at least, likely to add modest gains at the opening bell, according to U.S. equity futures prices, but much will depend on the direction of trading in Europe and the strength of quarter bank earnings reports due later in the session from Wells Fargo (WFC) - Get Report , JPMorgan (JPM) - Get Report and Citigroup (C) - Get Report .