Germany, France and Portugal joined many of their neighbors with anti-smoking bans in bars, restaurants and cafes from Jan. 1, lifting the gray haze that was part of their romantic atmosphere for more than a century.

In car-crazy Germany, drivers in major cities including the capital Berlin faced restrictions barring smog-producing vehicles from their centers while the northern Italian city of Milan imposed tolls on the heaviest polluters.

And Britain cracked down on television commercials for food and drink products heavy in fat, salt and sugar that target children under the age of 16 in a bid to curb obesity.

While many accepted the new rules as reasonable measures in the name of public health, some bristled at what they called the state’s overreach and the creeping end of the European way of life.

“I will not let anyone stop me from smoking at my own business,” Ali, owner of the Westend Pinte bar in Berlin, told Germany’s mass-market Bild newspaper.

“I’ve been smoking 40 cigarettes a day since I was 12 — I can’t quit now.”

Anne Cicek, manager of the Bier Bar in east Berlin, told the daily Berliner Zeitung that she would defy the rules: “We are not little children who need to be told what we cannot do.”

The conservative newspaper Die Welt noted that 19th century revolutionaries in Berlin had waved the banner for, among other civil liberties, the right to smoke wherever they pleased.

“The freedom to smoke in public was one of the few lasting achievements of 1848. That is over now,” it lamented. “Of course neither the West nor democracy will founder with the smoking ban. But will anything really be gained for people’s well-being or their health?”

After years of fierce resistance by the restaurant lobby, the legislation passed in Germany is piecemeal: smoking bans will be rolled out state by state until July and most allow establishments to maintain separate smoking sections.

Portugal implemented similar rules.

France in effect sent its more than 13 million smokers out into the cold on New Year’s Day as few bars and restaurants took on the large renovation and equipment costs to construct separate smoking rooms.

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