Dyson lost its battle to get compensation of €176mn from Brussels for damages that it claimed were caused by energy label tests that penalised their vacuum cleaners.
The British engineering company sought redress with the European Commission in 2018, after won five-year court battle to overturn regulations governing how vacuum cleaners are judged and marketed to consumers.
Dyson’s founder, Sir James Dyson (a billionaire Brexit supporter), argued that this regulation was discriminatory against its proprietary cyclone vacuum technology, which doesn’t require bags like many other vacuum cleaners.
Dyson claimed that the test conducted by the commission was based on vacuums with empty bag and did not represent “normal usage”. Dyson claimed it had allowed its competitors to engage in “anti-competitive behavior” by exploiting loopholes within the regulations.
The main argument of the group was that vacuums that use bags and filters tend to clog over time, resulting in a loss of suction and performance. Dyson’s vacuums without bags do not have this problem.
The European Court of Justice stated on Thursday that while Dyson was successful in getting the legislation annulled “the violation of the directive by the Commission was not serious enough to give rise an entitlement to compensation”.
The company added that “all arguments presented by Dyson are rejected” and “the compensation action brought by Dyson has been dismissed definitively”.
The Commission welcomed the ruling and stressed that “the court has not in any way questioned the effectiveness of EU policy on energy efficiency or the importance of energy labelling to meeting EU energy efficiency targets and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions”.
Dyson claimed that the Commission had used a label which “had the effect of misinforming consumers about the true performance of vacuums for many years”. Dyson added: “The fact Dyson’s case was won [in 2018] only makes today’s judgment on damages even more perverse.”
This ruling ends a nine-year court battle that began in 2014 when Brussels introduced the first energy labelling regulations.
Dyson’s damages claim had already been rejected by the EU General Court, but it was appealed to the EU highest court after the ECJ advocate general stated that Dyson had misinterpreted his arguments in the initial hearing.
The commission is reviving plans to require vacuum cleaners to display their energy consumption.
In an evidence call published in 2022 it stated that after the annulment the previous legislation, “it is necessary to design and lay out improved testing methods, particularly on the number double strokes and dust pickup and re-emission”, and that these “should be based on a partially loaded rather than empty receptacle”.
The commission was supposed to present a proposal last year, but it said that they were “consulting with all parties relevant” and would be presenting new rules in this year.