After a five-year legal battle, James Dyson has finally succeeded in his long-running legal battle to get the EU’s top court to strike down their absurd regulation that vacuum cleaners should be tested… without dust. The regulation enabled Dyson’s German competitors to market their vacuum cleaners with superior energy labelling, despite the fact that their performance dropped significantly as soon as their bags contained dust. That is, as soon as they were used…

The ruling means the EU will now have to go back and design a regulation that means that test are carried out “as close as possible to actual conditions of use”. A rare victory for common sense in the EU…