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LONDON (AFP) – The euro and European stock markets faltered on Monday, giving up early gains as investors questioned whether Ireland's EU/IMF bailout would really herald the end of the eurozone's debt crisis.

"News that the Irish government were going to accept assistance with a debt bailout package certainly gave traders something to cheer about at the start of the week," said sales trader Will Hedden at betting firm IG Index.

"But there seems to be a creeping realisation that this won't necessarily mark the end of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis."

In late morning deals, the European single currency dipped to 1.3720 dollars, having earlier spiked as high as 1.3786 dollars in reaction to the news from debt-ridden Ireland over the weekend.

European shares also trimmed earlier gains, with London up 0.08 percent, Frankfurt gaining 0.37 percent and Paris adding 0.13 percent.

Dublin sank 0.87 percent percent, after the once-proud Celtic Tiger was forced on Sunday to apply for the eurozone's second emergency rescue this year.

Madrid nosedived 0.95 percent amid heightened worries that Spain could be the next nation to appeal for help over its battered public finances.

"Ireland may have accepted a bailout this weekend but the eurozone's debt crisis is far from over," said research director Kathleen Brooks at trading site Forex.com.

The pressure on Irish government bonds eased early on Monday as the market took on board the news.

But the pressure on some other weak eurozone states such as Portugal -- which last week called on Dublin to take the aid money so as to help calm the markets -- showed no improvement, with yields or rates on Portuguese bonds rising.

"Portugal and Spain -- and maybe even Italy -- have very high debt burdens and may eventually have to use the European bailout fund to access finance," Brooks said.

"Portugal's finance minister has said that if Portuguese bond yields spike above 7.0 percent then it is unsustainable for the government to borrow in the capital markets. Portugal's yields are currently 6.72 percent -- very close to that threshold.

"So, Ireland is just another chapter in the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis and is not the end of the story."

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said Sunday his government had applied for aid from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

While the amount had not yet been decided, he said it would be less than 100 billion euros (137 billion dollars).

The bailout request had been widely expected amid mounting speculation over the perilous state of Ireland's public finances, dealers said.

Dealers said that as time goes on, the markets will focus more on the terms and conditions, trying to get a fix on whether solving the Irish problem will ease wider concerns over the eurozone.

Irish finances were ravaged by a domestic property market meltdown and costly bank rescues arising from the global financial crisis. Tax revenues, meanwhile, have been savaged as a result of a vicious recession.

In a further twist on Monday, Moody's credit rating agency warned that it would most likely have to downgrade Irish sovereign debt by several notches in view of the costs of the EU/IMF rescue.

"A multi-notch downgrade, leaving the rating of the Republic (of Ireland) still within the investment-grade category, is now the most likely outcome of our review of the sovereign credit," Moody's said in an analyst note.

The euro and equities have faced heavy selling pressure in recent weeks due to the debt woes of Ireland and other struggling eurozone nations such as Greece, Portugal and Spain.

Ireland is the second eurozone country to seek an EU/IMF bailout in just six months after Greece was rescued in May with 110 billion euros.

Later this week, Dublin is expected to deliver a detailed plan to slash spending and raise taxes as the crisis-hit nation struggles to balance the books.

The four-year plan will aim to make 15 billion euros of budget savings by 2014.

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LONDON (AFP) – European stock markets fell on Wednesday, after losses elsewhere, with miners hit by weak Chinese economic data, while the euro dipped on eurozone jitters before this week's G20 summit in South Korea.

London's benchmark FTSE 100 index of leading shares sank 0.58 percent in late morning trade, Frankfurt's DAX 30 lost 0.51 percent and the Paris CAC 40 shed 0.78 percent.

The European single currency, which has been hampered this week by fears concerns over eurozone sovereign debt, slipped to 1.3764 dollars from 1.3771 late in New York on Tuesday.

And gold retreated back under 1,400 dollars per ounce, as traders took profits one day after nailing a record high at 1,424.60 dollars.

"The marked sell off in US trading late last night and weakness in Asian and Australian stock markets effectively locked in a negative start to European equities," said City Index analyst Joshua Raymond.

"Weaker-than-expected data from China ... has been the trigger for investors to lock in profits in the heavyweight mining stocks."

China's trade surplus grew in October as both exports and imports rose on-year, the government said Wednesday, piling pressure on Beijing to allow the nation's yuan currency to appreciate on the eve of the G20 summit.

The trade surplus expanded to 27.15 billion dollars in October, customs authorities said, before a Group of 20 summit that is expected to focus on rebalancing the skewed global economy.

On Thursday, world leaders will meet in Seoul for two days of top-level talks, dominated by an ill-tempered drive to rebalance the lopsided global economy and resolve fractious currency disputes.

"Ahead of tomorrow's G20 summit, China's trade surplus will continue to keep the focus on the controversial subject of trade imbalances and reform of the international monetary system," added VTB Capital economist Neil MacKinnon.

Critics claim the yuan is undervalued by as much as 40 percent, giving Chinese exporters an unfair trade advantage by making their goods artificially cheap.

At the same time, however, many emerging nations argue that the Fed helps push the dollar lower via its bond-purchasing policy of quantitative easing, which effectively dilutes the value of the greenback.

China set the yuan's central parity rate -- the middle of the currency's allowed trading band -- at 6.6450 to the dollar on Wednesday, the strongest rate since currency reforms began in 2005.

"There is no doubt that currency tensions arising from the weakness in the US dollar will be high on the agenda," added MacKinnon.

"Many countries including China are openly critical of US monetary policy and what they see as indirect currency manipulation through the Federal Reserve's QE (quantiative easing) programme."

London investors, meanwhile, digested the Bank of England's latest quarterly report.

The British central bank forecast on Wednesday that the British economy would avoid a double-dip recession, despite the impact of the government's severe deficit-slashing austerity measures.

However, the BoE also warned that the outlook remained "uncertain" for both inflation and economic growth, and left the door open for restarting its own quantitative easing policy.

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