There have been reservations about gay acceptance in Europe's parliament.

The European Parliament says the European Commission should use new anti-discrimination guidelines to ban discrimination upon the grounds of sexual preference.

Strasbourg wants to extend it to all EU anti-discrimination policies, not only those relating to work practices.

However, the Chair of the EC, Jose Manuel Barroso, says new EU guidelines should only be adjusted to include discrimination against handicapped individuals.

He says that there are five EU members that would resist a policy banning prejudice against homosexuals, chiefly Roman Catholic countries such as Poland, Italy and Portugal.