Dyson loses €176mn EU damages claim

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Dyson has lost its fight for €176mn in compensation from Brussels over damages it claimed it suffered as a result of energy label testing that penalised its vacuum cleaners.

The British engineering group was seeking redress from the European Commission after winning a five-year legal battle in 2018 to overturn rules governing how vacuum cleaner efficiency is judged and presented to consumers.

Dyson, whose founder is billionaire and Brexit supporter Sir James Dyson, argued that the regulation discriminated against its proprietary cyclone technology, which does not require bags as many other vacuum cleaners do.

The commission’s test had been based on the performance of vacuums with empty bags and so did not reflect “normal use”, Dyson argued. The group claimed that it allowed “anti-competitive behaviour” from its rivals, some of whom it said were exploiting loopholes in the regulation to make their models appear more energy efficient than they were.

The group’s main argument was that vacuums with bags and filters clog up over their lifespan, often leading to a drop in suction and performance, something that Dyson’s bagless vacuums do not suffer from.

The European Court of Justice said on Thursday that although Dyson had succeeded in having the legislation annulled, “the breach of the directive committed by the commission was not sufficiently serious to give rise to an entitlement to compensation”.

It added that it rejected “all the arguments put forward by Dyson” and “the action for compensation brought by Dyson is dismissed definitively”.

The commission said it welcomed the judgment and underlined that the court “has not at any point in this case called into question the general effectiveness of EU energy efficiency policy, or the important contribution energy labelling measures make towards meeting the EU’s energy efficiency targets and reducing greenhouse gas emissions”.

Dyson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ruling marks the end of a nine-year legal battle since the energy labelling rules were first introduced by Brussels in 2014.

Dyson’s claim for damages had already been thrown out by the EU’s General Court but was brought to the EU’s highest court on appeal after the ECJ’s advocate general said that Dyson’s arguments had been misconstrued in the original hearing.

Since the ECJ’s decision to overturn the original legislation, the commission has revived plans to create mandatory energy labelling for vacuum cleaners.

In a call for evidence published in 2022, it said that following the annulment of the previous legislation “there is a need to design and lay down improved testing methods, notably on the number of double strokes, dust pick-up and dust re-emission” and that “these should be based on a partly loaded rather than an empty receptacle”.

A proposal was due to be presented last year but the commission said it was “consulting all relevant parties” and planned to come forward with new rules this year.