European shares slipped for a third day on Monday, with drugmakers down after the House of Representatives approved an overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, while renewed worries over Greece hurt banks.
By 0918 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of leading European shares was down 0.6 percent at 1,058.64 points, after losing 0.4 percent on Friday.
The pan-European index has rallied nearly 65 percent since hitting a low in early March 2009, and is up 1.2 percent this year.
Shares in pharmaceutical companies fell, with the STOXX Europe 600 health care index down 0.6 percent after the U.S. House of Representatives approved a sweeping healthcare reform.
The overhaul will extend insurance coverage to nearly all Americans, expand the government health plan for the poor, impose new taxes on wealthy and bar insurance practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.
Roche, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis and Bayer lost 0.4 to 2.1 percent.
"You might find the pharmas are somewhat friendless out there at the moment," said Stephen Pope, chief global equity strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald in London.
However, Pope said European markets would likely focus on the UK Budget and the meeting of European leaders at the end of the week.
Banks were also weaker, as Greece's debt situation remained a concern. Credit Suisse, UBS, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas fell 0.5 to 2.3 percent.
Greek bank shares were down 2 percent, with National Bank of Greece down 2.6 percent, EFG Eurobank down 2.6 percent and Bank of Piraeus off 2.8 percent.
At the weekend, European leaders sent out conflicting signals over aid to Greece, with Germany's Angela Merkel urging Athens to solve its debt problems alone and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi strongly backing European Union support.
Greece's share benchmark lost 1.7 percent.
Across Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 slipped 0.6 percent, Germany's DAX dropped 0.5 percent and France's CAC 40 eased 0.6 percent.
'MARKET OVERBOUGHT'
"The fact that we have been overbought recently has led me to suggest things which are tactically good to sell," said Geoff Wilkinson, head of investment research at Mint Securities.
"They are tactical. There is no evidence yet we are looking at a major turnaround here. It's just been very hard to buy anything."
Oil producers also came under pressure, weighed by weaker oil prices which fell towards $80 a barrel as firmer dollar, nagging worries over Greece and a surprise interest rate hike by India at the end of last week stoked concern over demand.
BP lost 1.4 percent and Total slipped 0.6 percent.
Royal Dutch Shell eased one percent after Arrow Energy agreed to sell its Australian coal-seam gas assets to the Anglo-Dutch oil major and PetroChina for a sweetened $3.1 billion.
Among individual movers, Cable & Wireless Communications dropped 0.7 percent after demerging its worldwide business.
French software firm Dassault Systems sagged 2.4 percent, hurt by a downgrade to "sell" from "neutral" from UBS.
British technology company Smiths Group advanced 2.1 percent. The company announced a $185 million purchase of U.S. connector firm, Interconnect Devices.
