The Stoxx Europe 600 index rose 0.5% to 267.72.
The gains came after a strong session for stocks on Wall Street, which continued to rally into the closing bell after well-received economic data.
U.S. markets will be closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday, which was also reflected in low trading volumes across Europe.
The U.K.'s FTSE 100 closed up 0.7% to 5,698.93 as gains for real-estate stocks and some miners helped lift the index.
Shares in Anglo American rose 2.7%.
Shares in Capital Shopping Centres Group were the biggest gainer in the FTSE index, climbing nearly 13% after the company said it had received a preliminary approach from Simon Property Group Inc.
The potential bid also provided a lift for other real-estate companies.
Hammerson rallied 4.8% and British Land gained 2.4%.
Among the other major indexes, Germany's DAX 30 rose 0.8% to 6,879.66 as car makers BMW and Volkswagen both rose around 1%.
The French CAC 40 index gained 0.3% to 3,760.42.
Brian Gallagher, an analyst at Dolmen Stockbrokers, said investors are still using dips in the market to buy stocks that have the most exposure to high-growth emerging markets, including miners, German industrial stocks and car makers.
But the picture in the rest of Europe was weaker.
The Irish ISEQ index fell 1.2% and Spain's IBEX 35 index slipped 0.2%.
Gallagher said there is still a lot of uncertainty in Ireland over whether corporation-tax levels will be increased and this is hurting some otherwise relatively strong Irish companies.
There is also continued skepticism over whether the country can keep up with payments under a bailout.
"People are just looking at the numbers and saying we can't afford to pay back that amount of debt at 5%," he said.
Among Irish stocks in the red Thursday, shares in airline Ryanair Holdings dropped 0.7%.
Banks across Europe were also mostly weaker as debt problems continued to weigh on sentiment.
Credit Suisse Group dropped 0.3%.
Also Thursday, LCH.Clearnet again increased the margin required for positions in Irish sovereign debt.
The margin now stands at 45%, having risen gradually from 3% as the debt crisis unfolded.
Among some of the other fallers in Europe, shares in newspaper publisher Daily Mail & General Trust dropped 3.5% in London after the group reported its earnings for the latest fiscal year.
The figures were largely in line with or ahead of market expectations, but analysts said a change to the group's accounting policy starting in fiscal 2011 could be a concern and would have cut around 7% from its earnings in fiscal 2010.
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