Sir James Dyson has lost his legal battle with the European Union over the regulation of vacuum cleaners.

The UK entrepreneur had sought to persuade the EU to scrap its energy-labelling rules, claiming that they allow his rivals to achieve “misleadingly good” efficiency ratings.

Sir James took his case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg, saying that the system of efficiency labels mis-leads customers because they are conducted when the devices are in pristine condition — in laboratories. He told the ECJ: “This gives a major advantage to our rivals”.

His company’s vacuum cleaner is marketed on the fact that it does not lose suction as it fills up with house-hold dirt, unlike vacuum cleaners that use a bag.

The court accepted that the testing regime is flawed and that “the suction performance and energy efficiency of a vacuum cleaner with a dust-loaded receptacle will be reduced due to dust accumulation”. However, it rejected his plea, as he “could not come up with an alternative test that would be reliable, accurate and reproducible”.

The Wiltshire-based company, which manufactures its products in Malaysia, said that such tests have been used globally for more than 10 years and that the ruling “defies belief. It is deplorable that the ECJ endorses tests that don’t
attempt to represent in-home use, and we believe this is causing consumers to be mis-led. By this judgment, the ECJ has given its support to unrepresentative tests — devised by the European Commission (EC) with a small group of European manufacturers that disregards the interests of consumers in Europe.

The judgment is all the more surprising in view of the revelations about car testing in the Volkswagen scandal, where the test do not reflect real-life usage.”

Dyson must now pay its own legal costs, as well as those of the EC. A few weeks ago, the company began legal proceedings against Bosch and Siemens, following tests said to show that the performance of their machines did not match their EC rating. Bosch and Siemens now intend to take legal action against Dyson over its “unfounded and untrue” claims.