Europe's main stock markets fell on Thursday after Wall Street closed lower overnight and as investors looked ahead to a G20 summit.
The FTSE 100 index dropped 0.11 percent to 5,133.60 points in late morning London deals.
Frankfurt's DAX 30 slipped 0.20 percent to 5,690.70 points and in Paris the CAC 40 shed 0.22 percent to 3,813.36 nearing the half-way mark.
The DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index of top eurozone shares declined 0.27 percent to 2,879.39 points.
"European markets fell on Thursday tracking falls in the US overnight," said City Index market strategist Joshua Raymond.
"The sell-off in the US ... towards the close was sudden and sharp and as a result has got a few investors a little jumpy," he added.
US stocks slid on Wednesday in a choppy Wall Street session as investors reacted to a US Federal Reserve announcement that it would maintain its stimulus effort to support a fragile economic recovery.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.83 percent to 9,748.55 points in a roller-coaster day that saw the blue-chip index briefly top 9,900 points.
The Fed on Wednesday acknowledged that the US economy was emerging from prolonged recession but maintained its near-zero interest rate and trillion-plus dollar effort to support the fragile recovery.
The Fed statement said it expects that sluggish conditions will "warrant exceptionally low levels of the Federal funds rate for an extended period."
The statement noted however that "economic activity has picked up following its severe downturn" amid improvements in financial markets and the housing sector.
"Investors in Europe have taken the slowing of debt purchases by the Fed as a concern that this may be a too soon a move and these concerns have been translated into equity weakness," Raymond said.
Elsewhere Thursday, traders were awaiting the start of the Group of 20 summit. The leaders of the world's biggest economies were gathering in the US city Pittsburgh promising tough action to police financial markets and prevent a repeat of last year's crash.
The two-day Pittsburgh meeting of the world's 19 biggest developed and emerging economies plus the European Union comes just over a year after a US credit market collapse unleashed global economic chaos.
Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei-225 index closed up 1.67 percent on Thursday as investors there returned from a five-day break in an upbeat mood, heartened by better-than-expected domestic trade data, dealers said.
Other Asian markets were mostly lower, however.
