Europe midday: Stocks higher ahead of US data

Europe's main equity indices were near their best levels of the session on the last day ahead of the release of a raft of US data.

As of 1230 BST, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was near its best levels of the day, trading up by 0.49% or 1.86 points to 382.57, with the Cac-40 rising by 0.64% or 33.10 points to 5,188.27 and the Dax rebounding 0.28% or 34.56 points to 12,450.82.

In parallel, front month Brent crude futures were up by 0.39% to $47.61 per barrel on the ICE while euro-dollar was slipping 0.29% to 1.1408.

Overnight, the official Chinese manufacturing sector purchasing managers index improved from a reading of 51.2 to 51.7, far surpassing the 51.0 forecast by analysts.

Nonetheless, Julian Evans-Pritchard at Capital Economics was unconvinced by the figures, telling clients they should be taken with a 'pinch of salt' given how they had been diverging recently from more reliable measures which had been pointing to easing momentum in the economy.

Data out of Europe on the other hand was generally upbeat.

French household consumption accelerated sharply in May, jumping by 1.0% month-on-month (consensus: 0.7%) after a gain of 0.4% during the previous month, according to INSEE.

Euro area consumer prices advanced at a 1.2% year-on-year pace in June, up from 1.1% in the month before (consensus: 1.3%) even as core CPI inflation gained 1.1%, after rising by 0.9% in May (consensus: 1.0%).

In other key data, joblessness in Germany rose by 7,000 people in June, exceeding forecasts calling for a drop of 10,000, although the rate of unemployment in the euro area's largest economy dropped by a tenth of a percentage point to 5.5% - its lowest level since 1991.

German retail sales meanwhile were 0.3% higher month-on-month.

RWE's chief told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the company was planning an additional €300m of savings by 2020.