LONDON: Europe's top stock markets rose on Friday but gains were capped by disappointing economic data out of the eurozone, analysts said.
London's FTSE 100 index of leading shares climbed 0.25 percent to stand at 6,320.28 points in midday deals, Frankfurt's DAX 30 won 0.45 percent to 8,132.16 points and in Paris the CAC 40 added 0.11 percent to 3,802.22. Madrid's IBEX 35 was flat at 8,075 points.
European markets had ridden out a rollercoaster session on Thursday following heavy losses in Tokyo on investor fears of central banks pulling the plug on their extraordinary stimulus measures.
"European indices have bounced higher this morning after a strong US close fed overnight gains in Asian stocks," said Matt Basi, head of UK sales trading at CMC Markets UK.
Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 index rallied 1.94 percent on Friday, rebounding from a massive sell-off in the previous session stoked by a surging yen and jitters over an end to central bank stimulus.
Concern is focused mainly on the phasing out of the US Federal Reserve's massive monetary stimulus, known as quantitative easing, which has been credited with propping up global equity markets in recent months.
However, cracks have also begun to emerge in a plan by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to jump-start the world's third-largest economy, a blueprint dubbed Abenomics.
In foreign exchange deals Friday, the European single currency dropped to $1.3320 from $1.3372 late in New York on Thursday.
The dollar fell to 95.08 yen from 95.31 yen Thursday.
Traders digested news of a sharp fall in the number of people in work in the eurozone during the first quarter that left employment across the single currency bloc at its lowest level in more than seven years.
Eurostat, the European Union's statistics agency, said the number of people in work in the 17 nations that use the euro fell 0.5 percent in the first three months of the year compared with the final quarter of 2012.
Spain's public debt meanwhile shot to a record high in the first quarter of this year, the Bank of Spain said Friday, despite Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's hotly protested austerity squeeze on the eurozone country.
Spain's public debt surged to 88.2 percent of annual economic output, up by 15.2 percentage points from a year earlier, the central bank said.
In France, shares in EADS lost 0.78 percent of their value to 42.67 euros amid the first test flight of the next generation A350 plane built by its Airbus subsidiary.
Friday's flight was going smoothly, its pilot said two hours after take-off.
"The aircraft is performing extremely well, we hope to reach (an altitude of) 25,000 feet (7,500 metres) very quickly," said Peter Chandler, one of the two test pilots flying the plane in the skies over the French city of Toulouse.
On the London Bullion Market meanwhile, the price of gold retreated to $1,381.20 an ounce from $1,385 on Thursday.
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