European E-Invoicing Mandates
Which countries require electronic invoicing, on what date, in which format, over which transport, and above what turnover threshold.
Quick answer: e-invoicing is mandatory in Italy, Belgium, Poland, and Greece today. Germany requires all businesses to receive structured invoices and phases in issuing during 2027 and 2028. France requires all businesses to receive from 1 September 2026. Across the EU, ViDA makes e-invoicing mandatory for intra-EU B2B supplies on 1 July 2030.
Last verified: 12 August 2026. National timetables change. This page is re-checked monthly against primary sources.
Mandate timeline, country by country
Two obligations matter and they arrive on different dates. The receiving obligation falls on the buyer and usually lands first, for everyone at once. The issuing obligation falls on the seller and is normally phased in by company size.
| Country | Obligation | Live date | Mandated format | Mandated transport | Threshold |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ItalyLive | Issue and receive | January 2019 | FatturaPA XML | SdI government portal | All businesses |
| GermanyLive | Receive | 1 January 2025 | EN 16931 (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD) | None mandated | All businesses |
| BelgiumLive | Issue and receive | 1 January 2026 | Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 | Peppol network | All taxable persons |
| GreeceLive | Issue | 1 February 2026 | myDATA | Government platform | All businesses |
| PolandLive | Issue | 1 February 2026 (large), 1 April 2026 (all) | FA(3) XML | KSeF government portal | Turnover of 43m euros or more, then all Polish VAT registrations and foreign entities with a fixed establishment |
| France | Receive (all) and issue (large and mid-sized) | 1 September 2026 | Factur-X, UBL, or CII | Certified PDP | Receiving: all. Issuing: large and mid-sized |
| France | Issue | 1 September 2027 | Factur-X, UBL, or CII | Certified PDP | SMEs and micro-enterprises |
| Germany | Issue | 1 January 2027 | EN 16931 (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD) | None mandated | Turnover above 800,000 euros |
| Germany | Issue | 1 January 2028 | EN 16931 (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD) | None mandated | All businesses, no threshold |
| Norway | Issue | 1 January 2027 | EHF 3.0 (aligned to Peppol BIS Billing 3.0) | Peppol network | All B2B sales |
| Slovakia | Issue and receive | 1 January 2027 | EN 16931 | Peppol, five-corner model | B2B and B2G |
| Ireland | Issue and receive | From November 2028 | EN 16931 | Phased rollout | Phased by size |
| EU-wide (ViDA) | Issue and digital reporting | 1 July 2030 | EN 16931 | Digital Reporting Requirements | All intra-EU B2B supplies |
Confirmed mandates only. Draft timetables, including Spain and several other member states, are omitted rather than given a date they have not been given in law.
A mandate can require a format, a network, both, or neither
Most coverage treats “Peppol” and “e-invoicing” as the same thing. They are not, and the difference decides what you actually have to build.
Peppol is a delivery network with a public participant directory and an AS4 transport layer. EN 16931 is a semantic data model, expressed either as UBL 2.1 or UN/CEFACT CII D16B. XRechnung, ZUGFeRD, Factur-X, and Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 are all national or sectoral narrowings of that same standard, formally called CIUS documents.
- Belgium and Slovakia mandate both the format and the Peppol network.
- Germany mandates the format only. Emailing a valid ZUGFeRD file is compliant. Peppol is optional.
- France mandates a transport model of its own, built on certified PDPs, not Peppol.
- Poland and Italy mandate a government portal, KSeF and SdI respectively, and no private network is involved.
Put plainly: Peppol is a network, EN 16931 is a format, and a mandate can require one, both, or neither.
Read: Peppol is not e-invoicingEvery one of these mandates covers invoices, not orders
There is no exception anywhere in the table above, and the reason is structural rather than accidental. These rules are VAT law. An invoice creates a tax liability that an authority can audit. A purchase order creates nothing taxable, so no revenue authority has a basis to require one.
Peppol does define ordering profiles, including BIS Order Only 3.3 and BIS Ordering 3.3. Adoption is thin because nothing compels it. There is also an adoption asymmetry that keeps it that way: invoicing is one-sided, since you can start issuing while your counterparty is legally obliged to receive, whereas ordering is two-sided and needs the buyer to move first.
Which means that in Belgium today, where every invoice is a compliant structured document travelling over a managed network, the purchase order that started the transaction is still very often a PDF attached to an email.
Guides
France, 1 September 2026
What every VAT-registered French business actually has to do, and how the PDP model replaced the original public portal plan.
Peppol is not e-invoicing
Which countries mandate a network, which mandate only a format, and why conflating them leads to building the wrong thing.
Poland KSeF
How the Polish national clearance system works, the FA(3) schema, and what it means if you have a Polish entity.
Does your ERP support Peppol?
Which systems ship native support, which need a third party, and why native often means only a handful of countries.
UBL vs X12 vs EDIFACT
How the three order and invoice standards map onto each other, field by field, for teams already running EDI.
Peppol ordering profiles
BIS Order Only 3.3, Ordering 3.3, and Order Response 3.3: what exists, who uses it, and why adoption stayed thin.
Frequently asked questions
It depends on the country and the date. Italy, Belgium, Poland, and Greece already mandate structured B2B e-invoices. Germany has required all businesses to be able to receive them since January 2025, with issuing mandatory from January 2027 above 800,000 euros turnover and from January 2028 for everyone. France requires all businesses to receive from 1 September 2026. Under ViDA, e-invoicing for intra-EU B2B supplies becomes mandatory across the bloc on 1 July 2030.
No. Germany mandates the format, not the transport. An invoice must conform to the European standard EN 16931, which in practice means XRechnung or ZUGFeRD, but German law does not require any particular delivery network. Sending a valid ZUGFeRD file as an ordinary email attachment is compliant. Peppol is one option among several, not a legal requirement.
No. France mandates its own transport model, built on certified providers known as Plateformes de Dematerialisation Partenaires (PDPs). Invoices must be exchanged through a certified PDP rather than sent directly. Many PDPs also connect to Peppol, but Peppol membership alone does not make you compliant in France.
No. Peppol is a delivery network with a public participant directory. EN 16931 is a data format. A country can mandate a format, a network, both, or neither. Belgium mandates Peppol as the network. Germany mandates only the EN 16931 format. Poland and Italy mandate a government portal instead of any private network.
From 1 September 2026 every VAT-registered business in France must be able to receive structured electronic invoices. On the same date, large and mid-sized companies must also issue them. Small and medium enterprises get until 1 September 2027 to start issuing. The receiving obligation applies to everyone from day one, regardless of company size.
Both sides carry obligations, on different timetables. The seller carries the issuing obligation, which is usually phased in by company size. The buyer carries the receiving obligation, which typically lands first and applies to everyone at once. Germany is the clearest example: all businesses had to be able to receive from January 2025, but issuing does not become universal until January 2028.
No. ViDA and every national mandate cover invoices only. The reason is structural: mandates are VAT law, and a purchase order creates no VAT event, so tax authorities have no basis to require one. Peppol does define ordering profiles such as BIS Order Only 3.3, but no government has ever mandated their use.
How to Test Order Extraction Before You Buy
Vendors demo on a clean, typed, single-page order. Your orders are scans and spreadsheets. Here is the test protocol, the seven traps that decide the result, and how to score a trial honestly.
- How to build a test set that reflects what you actually receive
- The seven traps that break extraction, unit of measure first
- How to score at the line, so a near-miss counts as the error it is
- The questions to ask every vendor, including us
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