Three Romanians living in the UK are convinced that one of the images displayed on cigarette packs sold around the European Union (EU) as part of a campaign to discourage smoking depicts their dead father. They claim that the photo has been taken and used without the family’s consent and are ready to sue the state for millions of euros.

The controversial photo shows an intubated man on a hospital bed and has been printed on cigarette packs after a new EU directive to discourage smoking entered into force in 2014. The new directive imposed more horrific images on cigarette packs to make the public aware of the negative effects smoking has on health. The European Commission claims that all the photos used in this campaign have been taken with the consent of the people who appear in them.

However, the three Romanian brothers say they were surprised to see the image of their father on cigarette packs in the UK and found that the photo also appears in other EU countries. The three, who are originally from the Romanian town of Hunedoara, claim the photo was taken when their father was in a hospital in Cluj-Napoca, in 2014. Meanwhile, the man passed away.

According to their lawyer, the moral damages could amount to millions of euros if it turns out that the photo is indeed of the Romanian man, and that it was used without the family’s consent.

“We’re talking about the image of a man lying on a hospital bed, intubated, dressed in a white shirt. In 2014, when the European directive transposing these horror images came into force, their father was hospitalized as he underwent a surgery that required general anesthesia,” the lawyer said according to Digi24.ro.

The lawyer also said that the man was a non-smoker and he was in hospital to undergo surgery for a leg problem, according to Romania Libera.

He also stated that the family mainly plans to sue the Health Ministry, the Justice Ministry, and the Finance Ministry, but are also thinking of going after the cigarette companies.

However, the cigarette producers say that they only respected the law. A cigarette company manager said that there are three mandatory sets of images that manufacturers have to use on the cigarette packs, which they received electronically from the Health Ministry.

The Health Ministry said that the images that appear on cigarette packs all over the EU have been provided by the European Commission after a thorough selection process that took almost four years. The process involved getting the approval of all the people depicted in these images or of their relatives, according to Economica.net.

The European Commission also says that it got the consent of all the people depicted in these images. According to the EC, over 60 complaints have been filed so far by people around the EU who are convinced that the man in this photo is their relative.

“Firstly, we wish to express our empathy for the people who really believe that the man in that photo is a member of their family and to whom the respective photo has caused grief, without any intention on our side. However, we can certainly state that the person in that image is not the one that the family in Cluj seems to recognize and any resemblance between the two people is only a coincidence,” the European Commission said in an official statement to local Economica.net.

The EC also says it can’t reveal the identity of the man in the photo, due to reasons related to the protection of personal data.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com