The European Directive on electronic invoicing for public authorities (EN 2014/55 / EU) defined a standard invoice (European Norm core invoice aka EN-16930) and made it mandatary to be supported by all public organizations throughout the European Union. At the same time, a number of building blocks have been defined as EIF (European Interoperability Framework), that combined with the EN-16931 provide a definition for VAT compliance.
The European Interoperability Framework (EIF) provides transaction compliance comfort
Legal context
The EU has facilitated this with the 2010/45 amendment to the VAT Directive and with the e-Invoicing directive 2014/55.
Invoice standard with a semantic model
Semantic interoperability ensures that the precise format and meaning of exchanged data and information is preserved and understood throughout exchanges between parties
Additional specifications to the model
On a document level, a number of countries have defined a national CIUS, specifying additional transaction compliance rules. These rules that are applied before sending a document to a buyer, do add compliance comfort and are updated following a bi-annual schedule.
Exchange infrastructure
The standard addresses the interconnection services, exchange and communication protocols with a guideline on Message transport.
Process integration
The standard does not define how a supplier or buyer needs to organize the internal work processes. Organization need to be able to transpose these but by defining a data model that contains a specific set of data it aims to support the most common processes
A number of member states have mandated B2G invoicing where suppliers need to implement e-Invoicing.
Following tables present an overview of the e-Invoicing regulations in different countries.
- B2G mandates in European member states;
- B2G mandates in non-member states.
- B2G support in European member states.
| Country | Additional syntaxes | Compliance | Platform | Peppol |
| Austria | CIUS | web | Yes | |
| Belgium | Peppol | Mercurius portal | Yes | |
| Croatia | CIUS | Fina | Yes | |
| Czech Republic | ISDOC, EDIFACT | NEN | – | |
| Denmark | OIOubl | Peppol | Nemhandel | Yes |
| Estonia | CII, EVS | Peppol | multiple | Yes |
| Finland | CII, Finvoice | Peppol | mutliple | Yes |
| France | CII, FacturX | CIUS | Chorus Pro | Yes |
| Germany | CII, ZUGferd | CIUS | web portals, e-mail | partially |
| Greece | Peppol | EDHT | Yes | |
| Lithuania | Peppol | eSaskaita | Yes | |
| Luxembourg | Peppol | portal | Yes | |
| Malta (2022) | Peppol | portal | Yes | |
| Netherlands | CIUS | Logius Digipoort | Yes | |
| Portugal | CII | CIUS | B2AP AS2, web services | – |
| Slovakia | Peppol | slovensko.sk e-mail | – | |
| Slovenia | CII e-Slog 2.0 | Extension | PPA | Yes |
| Spain | FacturE | CIUS | FACe | – |
| Sweden | EDIFACT | Peppol | DIGG | Yes |
B2G mandates by European member states
| Country | Additional syntaxes | Compliance | Platform | Peppol |
| NewZeeland (2022) | GST | Yes | ||
| Australia (2022) | GST | Yes | ||
| Iceland | CII | Peppol | FJS portal | Yes |
| Switzerland | CII, GS1, ZUGferd | eDirectory.ch | – | |
| UK-NHS | PEPPOL | Yes | ||
| Norway | EHF | Peppol | Yes | |
| Singapore | GST | InvoiceNow | Yes |
B2G Mandates outside European Union
| Country | Additional syntaxes | Compliance | Platform | Peppol |
| Cyprus | Peppol | Ariadni | Yes | |
| Ireland | EDIFACT | Peppol | Yes | |
| Latvia | CII | Peppol | eAddress | Yes |
| Liechtenstein | Peppol | – | ||
| Poland | Peppol | PEF | Yes | |
| UK-England | CII, EDIFACT, PDF | multiple | ||
| UK-Scotland | CII, EDIFACT, PDF | PECOS P2P | ||
| UK-Wales | CII | Yes |
Public body receivers ready for e-Invoicing, no mandate for suppliers
Where
Syntax
- Every country in the list supports EN-16931 in UBL syntax
- For historic reasons, national syntaxes can still be supported
- Some countries have an EDIFACT legacy
- CII is syntax is not generally supported
Rules
- Some countries have defined their specific rules as a national CIUS or refer to the Peppol CIUS
- Besides specific network rules, the Peppol CIUS includes national rules for a number of countries
Platforms
- Some of the countries have selected Peppol as their main exchange standard
- Most countries have organized a bespoke platform or exchange standard
- Most countries have a Peppol gateway established that is interfaced to their internal platform
We can conclude that by supporting the UBL syntax as well as EIF (with Peppol being the dominant implementation) most of the B2G compliance requirements are fulfilled.
As Peppol is present in EMEA, the same standards can be re-used for B2G implementation to non-European countries.
| Country | Additional syntaxes | Compliance | Platform | Peppol |
| NewZeeland (2022) | GST | Yes | ||
| Australia (2022) | GST | Yes | ||
| Japan | CIUS | EIPA | Yes | |
| Singapore | GST | InvoiceNow | Yes |
If you want to assess your transactions for compliance, AdValvas as a certified Peppol Access Point can help you by offering following services
- Translate to / from ERP formats with UBL, CII, ZUGferd
- User our free validation tool supporting all CIUS specifications for conformance testing
- Reach assessment where for suppliers and buyers Peppol presence is validated in bulk
So, does complying with the EN-16931 norm provides compliance in all countries? The answer is no. Besides VAT reporting requirements (SAF-T), a growing number of countries is imposing clearance models for B2B transactions. We will address these in separate posts.