The exchange reacted with great relief to the resumption of gas flow through Nord Stream 1 on Thursday.

However, the escalating government crisis in Italy gave investors new lines of concern.

While the Dax was almost unchanged in the morning with 0.2 percent growth to 13,008 points, pharmaceutical and chemical stocks that are heavily dependent on gas, such as Merck KGaA and Brenntag, were among the biggest daily winners in the Dax by around 2 percent.

The shares of the gas importer Uniper, which is negotiating for the state to get involved, even jumped 5 percent in the M-Dax.

Hanno Mussler

Editor in Business.

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In addition, freshly presented half-year figures moved the courses in the morning.

Satorius was right at the top of the Dax.

The laboratory equipment supplier exceeded expectations with its half-year figures.

In contrast, SAP's shares suffered from the fact that the software manufacturer had to reduce its profit target range for this fiscal year because of the war in Russia.

The SAP share lost on Thursday by almost 3 percent to 88.25 euros.

The euro, struggling amid EU-Russia tensions and slipping below par against the dollar a week ago, gained half a penny to $1.022 on Thursday morning.

On the other hand, concerns about Italy's debt sustainability flared up again because Prime Minister Mario Draghi is apparently about to resign.

The yield on Italy's 10-year government bonds rose to 3.5 percent on Thursday morning, from 3.2 percent on Wednesday.

This will spice up the meeting of the European Central Bank's Monetary Policy Council on Thursday afternoon.

Investors firmly assume that the ECB will raise interest rates for the first time in more than ten years.

The extent alone, whether by 0.25 or 0.5 percentage points, is unclear.

In the past two days, investors had already started betting that Russia would resume gas supplies after 10 days of maintenance work.

However, there were great fears that Russia, after Western sanctions for its attack on Ukraine, might cut gas supplies or not resume them at all.

Together with the rising prices for many commodities and the interest rate hikes by the central bank that are necessary to combat inflation, this creates a scenario in which a recession is becoming increasingly likely.

The expectation of weaker economic performance is also reflected in the demand for oil.

Brent crude oil prices showed a rather negative reaction to Russia's restarted gas supplies on Thursday.