The Court of Justice of the European Union has upheld the judgment of the General Court of the EU rejecting the claim for €176.1 million that the manufacturer of cyclonic bagless vacuum cleaners Dyson had made in 2019 as compensation for the damage suffered as a result of the illegality of the regulation (665/2013) on the energy labelling of vacuum cleaners (see EUROPE 12849/21), in a judgment delivered on Thursday 11 January (Case C-122/22 P).
In its judgment, the Court rejected all of Dyson’s arguments. Accordingly, it ruled that the European Commission had not committed a sufficiently serious breach of EU law to render the EU non-contractually liable. In particular, it says that the fact that directive 2010/30 on energy labelling leaves the Commission no room for discretion does not necessarily mean that its infringement is automatically sufficiently serious.
Disregard for the rule may not appear to be manifest, and therefore sufficiently serious, particularly if it is the result of an excusable error of law, given the difficulties in interpreting the rule and the technical complexity of the issues to be resolved. In the Court’s view, the General Court was therefore right to find that the Commission was faced with such difficulties and complexity.
See the Court of Justice’s judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/aca (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)