E-invoicing in Europe: EN 16931, Peppol, ViDA and the national mandates

"E-invoicing" means two different things in Europe, and the difference decides what you have to do. For VAT purposes a PDF by email is already an electronic invoice. For the growing list of national mandates, only a structured file that a machine can read counts — and increasingly it must travel through a government platform or an accredited network.

Structured invoices and EN 16931

Directive 2014/55/EU obliged every public authority in the EU to accept electronic invoices that comply with the European standard EN 16931. The standard defines a semantic model — which fields an invoice has and what they mean — and two permitted syntaxes: UBL 2.1 and UN/CEFACT CII. Most national B2B mandates build on the same model, which is why one well-formed EN 16931 invoice travels further than any PDF.

Peppol

Peppol is a delivery network rather than a format: senders and receivers connect through accredited access points and address each other by participant identifier. It carries EN 16931 invoices in the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 profile and is the mandated or de-facto channel for public-sector invoicing in many Member States, and for B2B in Belgium among others.

ViDA: the EU-level timeline

The VAT in the Digital Age package was adopted in March 2025. Since it entered into force, Member States may mandate domestic B2B e-invoicing without asking the EU for a derogation first, which is what has accelerated the national calendars. For cross-border B2B transactions, structured e-invoicing and digital reporting become mandatory EU-wide from 1 July 2030, with the standard EN 16931 as the reference.

National mandates as of September 2026

The picture changes every few months; the list below is a starting point, not a substitute for the national authority's own page.

• Italy: B2B e-invoicing through the SdI platform since 2019.
• Poland: the national KSeF system is mandatory for B2B invoicing, phased in during 2026.
• Belgium: structured B2B e-invoicing via Peppol mandatory from 1 January 2026.
• France: reception of electronic invoices mandatory for all businesses from September 2026, issuance phased in for large and mid-sized businesses first.
• Germany: businesses must be able to receive EN 16931 invoices since 2025; the issuing obligation is phased in from 2027.
• Spain: a certified invoicing-system regime (VERI*FACTU) with adaptation dates in 2027, and a separate B2B e-invoicing regime enacted by Real Decreto 238/2026 whose start dates depend on a ministerial order still pending at the time of writing.

What EUFactura does today

Every issued invoice can be downloaded as a UBL 2.1 file that follows the EN 16931 model, singly or as a monthly ZIP, and the app tells you when an invoice is not yet complete enough for a valid structured file rather than producing one that a platform would reject. Delivery over Peppol and submission to national platforms (SdI, KSeF, VERI*FACTU) are on the roadmap and not available yet; if your country's mandate already applies to you, you need a channel for that part today.