Europe midday: Traders sit on their hands ahead of G-20

Stocks on the Continent were weaker come midday, tracking a dip on Wall Street overnight even as traders hoped for the best out the G-20 leaders meeting in Buenos Aires at the weekend.

On that note, Chris Beauchamp at IG told clients: "Equities are under heavy pressure in Friday morning trading, hurt by fears of an intensification of trade war tensions between the US and China, and sentiment has taken a further knock ahead of a meeting between German carmakers and the White House that many worry will simply give the President an opportunity to grand-stand on a subject very close to his heart – tariffs."

As of 1237 GMT, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was down by 0.6% or 1.66 points at 356.49, alongside a drop pf 0.66% or 74.21 points to 11,223.57 for the German Dax and a decline of 0.39% or 19.51 points to 4,986.74 for the Cac-40.

The flow of data at the end of the week was decidedly mixed, with Italy's national statistics office reporting that the country's economy shrank unexpectedly over the three months to September.

Italian GDP dropped at a 0.1% quarter-on-quarter pace, its first decline since the second quarter of 2014, ISTAT said, which was less than a preliminary estimate of unchanged.

And the latest readings on Eurozone unemployment and inflation both came in below economists' forecasts.

According to Eurostat, joblessness in the single currency bloc was unchanged from the month before in November at 8.1%, defying projections for a dip to 8.0%.

The rate of gains in headline consumer prices in the euro area meanwhile slowed from a 2.2% clip year-on-year for October to 2.0% in November (consensus: 2.1%).