In regular trading, when a bid and an ask price meet each other, a trade occurs. During this 'netting' period, bids and asks can be placed at any price, however, because the market isn't strictly open, it means the bids and asks aren't matched for a 3 minute period IE: trading doesn't occur until one final trade is made 3 minutes after the close.
Consider this as an example: Lets say you are trading a (fictional) Eurex product called "stoxx eurex'. at 15.59EST, there are bids at 99.99 and offers at 100.01. If the bid and offers meet, a trade will occur, most likely around the price 99.99-100.01. However, after 16.00, you can place a bid at any price, and an offer at any price and you won't be filled on a trade until 16.03. this effectively means you can put a bid at 100.08, and a trade will not occur until 16.03, which is like saying "when 16.03 comes, I am willing to pay any price up to 100.08 to get filled on my bid." The mechanism works (I think!) by averaging out all of the bids and offers based on price and size, and displaying one averaged price. Also, during the period of 16.00-16.03, no bids or offers are displayed on the market, meaning there is only this average price based on the bids and offers in the market. Think of it as one big auction of buyers and sellers, where the auctioneer wants to find the price that will fill the most people, to trade the most volume. After this final auction, the market closes and all bids and offers are rejected by the exchange.
I hope that helps some more. It should explain why you don't see any volume between 16.00-16.02.
Unfortunately, my information is based on experience rather than research, so please take it with a grain of salt, although I did find a nice summary of it on the Eurex website
here.