Stocks in Europe declined from their highest level in almost five years before Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke testifies on the outlook for the world's biggest economy.

The European Union's leaders meet at a summit in Brussels today, where they may step up efforts against tax evasion.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King was defeated for a fourth month in his bid to expand stimulus. Six members of the Monetary Policy Committee voted to keep quantitative easing at 375 billion pounds ($568 billion) this month, the central bank said in the minutes of its May 8-9 meeting. King, David Miles and Paul Fisher backed increasing it by 25 billion pounds.

U.K. retail sales unexpectedly fell in April, a report showed. Sales including fuel declined 1.3 percent from March, the Office for National Statistics said in London. The median forecast in a survey called for a 0.1 percent increase.

Wm Morrison lost 2.8 percent to 281.3 pence. UBS placed 103 million shares on behalf of an institutional seller at 280 pence each, according to terms of the sale obtained by Bloomberg News.

Pandora tumbled 11 percent to 199.90 Danish kroner. Prometheus sold 13 million shares, raising 2.6 billion kroner ($451 million) in gross proceeds, joint bookrunner JPMorgan Chase & Co. said in a statement. Prometheus will retain a 40.9 percent stake in Pandora.

Metro jumped 5.6 percent to 26.17 euros, its biggest gain in four months. Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to overweight from equal weight, meaning investors should buy the shares. Morgan Stanley also added the stock to its best ideas list, citing the possibility of reversing declining cash and carry sales, the stabilization of Metro's MediaMarkt stores and potential disposals.

Lagardere SCA, France's largest publisher, advanced 2.9 percent to 28.60 euros after JPMorgan upgraded the shares to neutral from underweight, citing their underperformance relative to other media stocks.

FTSE 100 6,792.4 -11.47 -0.17%

CAC 40 4,013.83 -22.35 -0.55%

DAX 8,451.35 -20.85 -0.25%