European shares eased on Thursday as losses in healthcare and industrials weighed early on, with focus on comments from a spate of U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers and data due later in the day to assess the U.S. central bank's policy path.
The pan-European STOXX 600 shed 0.5% to trade at 551.3 points, as of 0708 GMT. Most regional bourses also started lower, with German blue-chips and the UK's FTSE 100 down 0.4%, each.
Healthcare stocks dropped 1.1%, with German medical technology company Siemens Healthineers sliding 6% after the U.S. Commerce Department said it has opened new national security investigations into the import of personal protective equipment, medical items, robotics, and industrial machinery.
UK's Smith+Nephew also fell 1.1%.
Other laggards included construction and materials, down 1.1%, and industrial goods and services, off 0.6%.
On the bright side, H&M jumped 9.4% after the Swedish fashion retailer reported a substantially bigger rise than expected in its third-quarter profit.
At least seven Fed officials are set to make public remarks later in the day, while a reading of U.S. second-quarter GDP and weekly jobless claims would also be on investors' radar.
(Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru and Amir Orusov in Gdansk; Editing by Rashmi Aich)
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