Dyson wins appeal on EU vacuum efficiency tests

Dyson won an appeal on Thursday to force the European court to reconsider its bid to change Brussels’ vacuum cleaner efficiency tests.

The higher court’s decision grants Dyson another chance to challenge European energy labeling for vacuum cleaners. The lower court must look again at the UK engineering company’s claims that EU testing processes enabled its rivals’ bagged vacuum cleaners to achieve misleading results that overstate their energy efficiency.

Dyson had proposed that the tests should be done with some dust in the dust bag, to better reflect real world conditions. It argued the current tests – which use empty dust bags – give bagged vacuums “artificially high level of performance” and puts its bagless appliances at a disadvantage.

Since September 2014, the European Commission has used tests and energy labels to inform consumers about the energy efficiency and performance of various appliances. Dyson took the commission to the Luxembourg court in 2015 to force it to change its testing of vacuums.

The court’s decision in November 2015 dismissed Dyson’s case saying it had “failed to demonstrate that there were more reliable, accurate and reproducible tests than the one endorsed by the [European] Commission”.

Thursday’s judgement rejects that decision and sends the case back to the lower court requiring it to reconsider Dyson’s suggestion for a reproducible test that better reflects the energy used by those stuffed-full dust bags in most of our vacuums.