LONDON, June 28 (Reuters) - Euro zone bond yields held

steady on Friday ahead of U.S. inflation numbers and the first

round of voting in France's parliamentary election this weekend,

while shrugging off French inflation data that was in line with

expectations.

German 10-year bond yield, the benchmark for the

euro zone bloc, was little changed at 2.45%, while France's

10-year yield was 3.27%, also steady on the day.

That left the spread between the two at 81.5 basis points,

testing its 2017 high of 82.8 bps, a break past that level would

take the spread to its widest since 2012.

It widened significantly earlier this month after President

Emmanuel Macron called the snap parliamentary election. Opinion

polls point to the far right winning the most seats, but falling

short of an overall majority, while a far left bloc comes in

second.

The first round of voting is on Sunday, but the final

outcome will not be known until after a second round of voting

on July 7. It is hard to predict the outcome as it will largely

depend on to what extent rivals of the far-right Rassemblement

National party will team up and withdraw their own runoff

candidates to block the far right.

"The French election is likely to be the main focus by

Monday, but before we get to that, today will bring several

important inflation numbers," said Jim Reid, global head of

macro research at Deutsche Bank, in a morning note.

"In particular, we've got the US PCE inflation report for

May, which is the measure that the Fed officially target, and

hence is closely followed in markets."

That data is due at 1230 GMT, and analysts polled by Reuters

are expecting a 2.6% year on year gain for both headline and

core PCE.

French preliminary inflation for June was released earlier

on Friday. The EU-harmonised measure came in at 2.5% in line

with expectations. It did little to move bond markets.

Italy's 10-year yield was lower by 2.2 basis

points​ at 4.01%.