Investing.com - The euro rose to three-week highs against the softer yen on Tuesday as expectations for further monetary easing by the European Central Bank waned, but investors remained wary ahead of upcoming euro zone inflation data.
EUR/JPY touched highs of 142.45, the most since April 4 and was last up 0.25% to 142.29.
The pair was likely to find support at 141.50 and resistance at 143.05.
The euro continued to be underpinned by expectations that the preliminary euro zone inflation report, due for release on Wednesday, would show that consumer prices ticked higher this month.
An uptick in the region’s inflation rate would ease pressure on the ECB to implement additional policy measures to safeguard the recovery.
Meanwhile, Germany was to release what would be closely watched preliminary data on consumer prices later in the trading day.
Last week, ECB President Mario Draghi reiterated warnings that further gains in the euro could trigger additional monetary easing to stop inflation from falling. He also said the ECB could launch a "broad-based" asset purchase program if the medium-term inflation outlook deteriorated.
But expectations for further easing measures subsided on Tuesday after Draghi told German lawmakers that quantitative easing measures still remained some way off, despite the low inflation outlook.
The euro pared back gains against the dollar, with EUR/USD last up 0.09% to 1.3862 after rising to session highs of 1.3879 earlier.
Elsewhere, the common currency was slightly higher against the pound, with EUR/GBP up 0.10% to 0.8246.
The euro pushed higher after data on Tuesday showed that the U.K. economy grew slightly less than forecast in the first three months of the year.
The Office of National Statistics reported that the U.K. economy grew 0.8% in the first quarter, bringing the annual rate of growth to 3.1%, the fastest rate of annual growth since the fourth quarter of 2007.
Market expectations had been for quarterly growth of 0.9% and an annual expansion of 3.2%.