This was CNBC's live blog covering European markets.
European stocks pared losses to close higher on Wednesday, as investors reacted to worse-than-expected economic data out of the United States.
The Stoxx 600 index closed up 0.46%, its seventh consecutive winning day.
The Stoxx automotive sector index fell 1.2% as earnings weakness overrode U.S. President Donald Trump signing an executive order that softened some of his automotive tariffs. The move maintains a 25% vehicle import rate but reduces the overall level as a result of additional duties on products such as steel and aluminum.
Healthcare stocks moved higher, with the regional Stoxx Healthcare index adding 1.3%. A number of companies in the industry addressed U.S. tariffs in their first-quarter earnings reports, with GSK, AstraZeneca and Smith+Nephew all telling investors they were well positioned to cope with any impact.
Trump's tariffs have unsurprisingly emerged as a key theme in early corporate results, with many citing the difficulty of forecasting, while bank profits beat estimates. Those trends continued Wednesday, with Swiss lender UBS reporting better-than-expected net profit of $1.692 billion in the first quarter, while auto giant Stellantis suspended its full-year guidance due to uncertainties.
Elsewhere, preliminary data showed on Wednesday that the euro zone economy grew by a better-than-expected 0.4% in the first quarter of the year, following stagnation at the end of 2024.
Speaking to CNBC's "Europe Early Edition" on Wednesday, Gediminas Šimkus, chair of the Bank of Lithuania and a member of the European Central Bank's Governing Council, said he backed a quarter percentage point rate cut at the ECB's next meeting in June and that it is "basically general knowledge" that U.S. tariffs will be disinflationary for the euro area in the short term.
Asia-Pacific markets were mixed on Wednesday.
European stocks pared losses to close higher on Wednesday, as investors reacted to worse-than-expected economic data out of the United States.
The Stoxx 600 index closed up 0.46%, its seventh consecutive winning day. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 rose for 13 consecutive sessions.
France's CAC 40 and Germany's DAX were up 0.5% and 0.32%, respectively.
The euro was 0.1% lower against the U.S. dollar at 1:50 p.m. in London, trading at around $1.137. The British pound extended its losses against the greenback to trade at $1.336 - a decline of 0.4%.
The safe haven Swiss franc rose slightly against the U.S. currency.
The U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of 2025, fueling recession fears at the start of President Donald Trump's second term in office as he wages a potentially costly trade war.
Gross domestic product, a sum of all the goods and services produced from January through March, fell at a 0.3% annualized pace, according to a Commerce Department report Wednesday adjusted for seasonal factors and inflation.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a gain of 0.4% after GDP rose by 2.4% in the fourth quarter of 2024. However, over the past day or so some Wall Street economists changed their outlook to negative growth, largely fueled by an unexpected rise in imports as companies and consumers sought to get ahead of the Trump tariffs implemented in early April. Imports subtract from GDP.
U.S. companies slowed hiring sharply in April as they braced against potential impacts from President Donald Trump's tariffs against U.S. trading partners, ADP reported Wednesday.
Private sector payrolls rose by just 62,000 for the month, the smallest gain since July 2024, amid heightened uncertainty over the degree of the tariffs and the impact they would have on hiring plans and broader economic conditions.
The total marked a deceleration from the downwardly revised gain of 147,000 in March and missed the Dow Jones consensus estimate for an increase of 120,000.
The regional Stoxx Healthcare index was 1.5% higher at 11:18 a.m. in London, making the industry one of the best-performing sectors in Europe as a number of pharmaceutical companies updated investors on their outlook for the rest of the year.
British medical equipment manufacturer Smith+Nephew on Wednesday confirmed its full-year guidance of around 5% revenue growth in 2025, saying its unchanged outlook included an expected net impact of $15 million to $20 million from U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs regime this year.
"Just over half our revenues are in the US and two thirds of the products we sell within the US are manufactured in-market," the company said in its first-quarter earnings release. "Our other manufacturing sites are in Costa Rica, UK, Malaysia, China and Switzerland. We are working to mitigate tariff impacts from products and raw materials imported into the US, including leveraging our global manufacturing network in terms of mix and supply routes."
Shares of Smith+Nephew gained 6.7% during morning deals, pushing the company's stock close to the top of the Stoxx 600 index. The company's first-quarter revenue came in at $1.4 billion, in line with estimates.
U.K. pharmaceutical giant GSK, which also released a quarterly earnings report on Wednesday, saw shares jump 4.2% after it confirmed its 2025 guidance and addressed the possibility of the Trump administration slapping the industry with new import duties.
"The company is well positioned to respond to the potential financial impact of sector-specific tariffs, should they be implemented, with mitigation options identified in the supply chain and productivity initiatives," GSK said in its earnings update. "The company will continue to monitor and review developments related to this situation."
GSK's £7.5 billion ($10 billion) first-quarter