The General Court of the European Union has rejected a claim for €176.1 million by the manufacturer of bagless cyclonic vacuum cleaners, Dyson, and several other companies to compensate for the damage suffered as a result of the illegality of the Regulation (665/2013) on the energy labelling of vacuum cleaners (see EUROPE 12133/27), in a judgment handed down on Wednesday 8 December (T-127/19).
The General Court is of the opinion that, in the present case, the non-contractual liability of the EU is not engaged because the following three cumulative conditions are not met: - the Rule of law violated has the purpose of conferring rights on individuals and the violation is sufficiently characterised; - the reality of the damage is established; - there is a direct causal link between the breach of the duty incumbent on the perpetrator and the damage suffered by the injured parties.
The applicant companies submit that the 2013 Regulation discriminated between bagged vacuum cleaners and bagless cyclonic vacuum cleaners by treating these two categories of vacuum cleaners in an identical manner, even though their characteristics are not comparable, without any objective justification.
Nevertheless, the General Court considers that the Commission, by adopting the test method based on the use of an empty reservoir to assess the energy performance of vacuum cleaners, did not manifestly and gravely infringe the limits of its discretion or commit a sufficiently serious breach of the principle of equal treatment. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)