Apr 7, 2006
‘Swedish PM sues Ryanair for using his photo in advert’
Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson and an ex-minister are suing Ryanair for using a picture of them in an advert for cheap flights with the caption “time to flee the country?”, their lawyer said yesterday.
Social Democrat leader Persson, who faces a tough bid for re-election in September, and former Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds have been widely criticised for their tardy response to the Asian tsunami in which 500 Swedish holidaymakers died.
They are suing the Irish cut-price airline in a Stockholm court for what their lawyer called a “symbolic” sum of 75,000 crowns ($9,869) each, for breaking a Swedish law against the unauthorised use of names or images in adverts.
“Ryanair has published an advertisement using a picture of Goran Persson and Laila Freivalds without their consent and that is not something you can do in Sweden because it’s a violation of a quite unusual law,” lawyer Lennart Kanter Sid.
“It gets worse because the manner in which it is used is offensive,” he told Reuters.
Ryanair, already critical of Persson’s government over plans for a new environmental tax on air travel, hit back, calling the lawsuit “a waste of tax payers’ money” and inviting customers to comment on its Web site.
“This government intends to raise tax to stifle competition for low fares in Sweden which consumers show they want,” said Ryanair spokeswoman Lotta Lindquist-Brosjo.
“By going further with this (lawsuit) it is yet another waste of tax payers’ money,” she added.
A parliamentary panel has criticised Persson and Freivalds for the government’s poor emergency measures and slow response to the Asian tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004.
Freivalds resigned last month in an unrelated row over her role in the closure of a Web site with cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, thus avoiding a possible no-confidence vote over the tsunami in parliament.