With market watchers awaiting next week’s decision on interest rates from the Bank of Canada, Europe’s central bankers made their calls today. The European Central Bank kept rates unchanged, but the Bank of England cut rates 25 by basis points.

“As we suspected, the Bank of England decided to cut its repo rate by 25 basis points, to 3.5% at today’s Meeting,” reports CIBC World Markets. That’s a 48-year low.

In a statement accompanying the rate decision, the Bank of England justified today’s interest rate cut by the fact that the global economic recovery remains hesitant while the possibility for subdued economic activity is continuing in the near-term.

CIBC notes that the Bank obviously paid attention to sterling’s recent pick up in its decision.

CIBC also says that it was no major surprise that the European Central Bank decided to leave its marginal lending, repo and deposit rates unchanged, “as just a month after having cut rates by an aggressive 50 bps a further policy action was highly undesirable and unlikely today.”