The mayor of Amsterdam on Monday wrote to his counterparts in eight European Union countries urging them to allow gay people to marry and hold public demonstrations.

In a letter to the mayors of eight capital cities, Job Cohen said the fifth anniversary of same-sex marriages in the Netherlands was an "appropriate occasion" to ask for gay rights to be upheld elsewhere in Europe.

The letter, also sent to the EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini, called on European mayors to "adhere to the universal declaration of human rights, and to do everything in your political power to open up marriage for same sex couples and safeguard the right of public demonstrations in your city".

Cohen said he was "concerned" by measures taken in some cities to ban gay demonstrations.

"We are particularly concerned by the news that homophobic attitude and behaviour is propagated by measures and policies of local authorities in some of the new EU-member states," he added.

Cohen targeted the mayors of Dublin, Lisbon, Prague, Riga, Tallinn, Vienna, Vilnius and Warsaw in his letter.

In Portugal, a lesbian couple recently had their request for a marriage licence turned down, while Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, banned several homosexual demonstrations when he was mayor of Warsaw.

More than 8,000 same-sex marriages have been celebrated in the Netherlands in the five years since they became legal, official statistics show.