E-invoicing in Europe: who mandates it, and from when

Flowtly Editorial Team6 min

Status as of 15 September 2026. Mandate dates in Europe move, and several on this page have moved before. Treat it as a starting point and confirm against your national tax authority before making a compliance decision.

Electronic invoicing in Europe is not one rule. It is roughly thirty national timetables converging on a single EU framework, and a business selling across borders can be mandated in one market and entirely voluntary in the one next door.

The EU backdrop: ViDA

VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) was adopted by the ECOFIN Council on 5 November 2024. It sets the destination: by 2030, intra-EU B2B transactions move to standardised electronic invoicing and digital reporting.

Two consequences worth holding on to:

  • National mandates arriving before 2030 are not detours. Countries are building toward the same European standard (EN 16931), so a mandate that lands in 2026 is an early instalment of ViDA rather than a local exception.
  • Countries that already run their own model must converge. Italy's clearance platform predates ViDA by years, and its derogation runs out.

Where each market stands

"B2G" means invoices to public bodies; "B2B" means business to business. The distinction matters, because B2G has been mandatory across the EU for years and B2B is the wave arriving now.

Country B2B status Key dates Model
Poland Mandatory 1 Feb 2026 large taxpayers · 1 Apr 2026 all businesses KSeF, central clearance
Belgium Mandatory 1 Jan 2026, all businesses at once Peppol
France Mandatory, phased 1 Sep 2026 receive (all) + issue (large & mid) · 1 Sep 2027 issue (SMEs) Approved platforms
Germany Mandatory, phased 1 Jan 2025 receive (all) · 1 Jan 2027 issue (turnover > €800k) · 1 Jan 2028 issue (all) Decentralised, EN 16931 formats
Italy Mandatory since 2019 Derogation extended to 2027, then ViDA alignment SDI, central clearance
Romania Mandatory since 2024 1 Jan 2024 report all B2B · 1 Jul 2024 e-Factura only · 1 Jan 2025 B2C RO e-Factura, central clearance
Spain Legislated, timing unsettled B2B start depends on the implementing regulation and has moved more than once · VeriFactu for corporations from Jan 2027 Crea y Crece
Portugal Not mandated B2B Certified software, QR codes, ATCUD, monthly SAF-T Tight control without a B2B mandate
Netherlands Not mandated B2B Peppol established for B2G Peppol
Denmark, Sweden Not mandated B2B B2G mandatory via Peppol Peppol

Roughly a third of European countries mandate B2B issuing today; most of the rest remain voluntary with B2G already compulsory.

What actually differs between them

The dates get the attention, but the model is what changes how your systems work:

  • Clearance (Poland, Italy, Romania) — the invoice goes to a government platform first, which validates and assigns it an identifier. The platform is in the path between you and your customer, so an outage or a rejection is your problem in real time. Romania adds a clock: an invoice has to reach RO e-Factura within five working days of being issued, and it only counts once the platform has validated it and applied the Ministry of Finance seal. A PDF sent alongside is a courtesy copy, not the invoice.
  • Network (Belgium, the Nordics, the Netherlands) — invoices travel over Peppol between accredited access points. No central gatekeeper; interoperability is the point.
  • Decentralised with prescribed formats (Germany) — you exchange invoices directly, but they must be structured and standards-compliant. XRechnung, ZUGFeRD 2.1+ and Peppol BIS 3.0 all qualify.

A vendor supporting "e-invoicing" in one of these models does not automatically support another. Worth asking specifically.

Doing this in Flowtly

  • The E-Invoicing module sends and receives structured invoices and tracks submission status.
  • For Poland, the KSeF integration converts invoices to the required XML, submits them, and stores the confirmation.
  • German e-invoicing uses XRechnung and ZUGFeRD, which are EN 16931 formats.
  • Romania is not one of the filing integrations yet. KSeF is the only one that submits on your behalf today, so reaching ANAF remains a separate step. That mandate is already in force, so it is worth settling before the first invoice rather than after.

This page has a shelf life

Every date here is a legislative timetable, and legislative timetables slip — France's has moved, Spain's has moved repeatedly, and Germany's phased dates were set by the Growth Opportunities Act rather than by the original proposal.

Re-check this page each quarter, and always confirm against the national tax authority before acting on it. A stale table on this subject is worse than no table, because it reads as current.

Connection map

Refers toUses upDerived fromPart ofPlanned vs actual
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
invoice billed to counterparty. invoice taxed by tax-group. cost spends against budget. cost owed to counterparty. bank-transaction reconciled to invoice. bank-connection imports bank-transaction. contract schedules payment-schedule-line. payment-schedule-line invoiced as invoice. contract agreed with counterparty. contract attached to budget. contract orders purchase-order-line. contract amended by contract-amendment. contract sets out contract-clause. purchase-order-line prices position. purchase-order-line estimated against time-entry. budget raises budget-alert. budget covers project. counterparty defaults to budget. counterparty defaults to project. invoice billed from project. set-off-declaration settles invoice. set-off-declaration declared with counterparty. project linked to budget. tenant-turnover reported by counterparty. tenant-turnover compared per area from contract. utilities-statement calculated for contract. lead becomes counterparty. deal sold to counterparty.billed totaxed byspends againstowed toreconciled toimportsschedulesinvoiced asagreed withattached toordersamended bysets outpricesestimated againstraisescoversdefaults todefaults tobilled fromsettlesdeclared withlinked toreported bycompared per area fromcalculated forbecomessold toIInvoice — A sales document issued to a client: line items, dates, tax. It is created, reviewed, previewed and then sent — or, when it went out some other way, recorded as delivered.InvoiceCCounterparty — The other side of a financial document — a client billed, or a supplier owed.CounterpartyTTax group — The tax treatment applied to a line, so rates are set once rather than per document.Tax groupCCost — Money the organisation owes or has spent, tracked against a budget.CostBBudget — The financial envelope an engagement is measured against — what was planned, versus what has actually been spent.BudgetBBank transaction — A movement on a connected bank account. Matching it to an invoice or a cost is what makes the books agree with the bank.Bank transactionBBank connection — The consented link to one bank that transactions arrive through. It can stop working on its own — a consent expires or is withdrawn — so it reports whether it is still working.Bank connectionCContract — The financial terms of an engagement: a structured set of payment schedule lines, in one direction or the other.ContractPPayment schedule line — One dated amount on a contract, in a direction — money owed to a supplier, or due from a client.Payment schedule lineOOrder line — One line of a purchase order: a role priced by the hour with the hours estimated for it, or a deliverable priced as an outcome. A deliverable carries no hours at all.Order lineCContract amendment — What a contract's value, area, per-period amount and dates are from a given date. It states the whole picture rather than the change, and the contract keeps its as-agreed values.Contract amendmentIInvoicing clause — A rule a contract states about how its invoices are raised, such as which exchange rate converts the amount, quoted in the contract's own words. It informs the invoice; it is never applied automatically.Invoicing clausePPosition — The catalogue of job titles a project role is drawn from.PositionTTime entry — What actually happened — work time logged against a project.Time entryBBudget alert — A notice that a budget has gone off plan - spending over the planned amount, or a margin below the one that was planned. It is raised by a daily check rather than by anyone asking for it.Budget alertPProject — The core organizational unit for a business initiative, client engagement or internal work. Everything tracked — time, cost, invoicing, profitability — hangs off one.ProjectSSet-off declaration — A record that your invoices to one counterparty and its cost documents were settled against each other, in amounts that balance exactly. It lowers what remains due on the invoices; it is not a payment.Set-off declarationTTenant turnover — A tenant's reported sales for one month, entered by staff and used for reporting only. An absent figure means not reported, which is a different statement from a reported zero.Tenant turnoverUUtilities statement — One lease's electricity for one month, the kWh its meters recorded times the tariff in force. A draft until finalised, then it never changes; a correction is a new draft.Utilities statementPProspect — A company you are working but that is not a customer yet. It sits at New, Contacted or Qualified, and everything done to it is logged against it.ProspectDDeal — A sale in progress: a customer, an amount, and the stage it has reached. It cannot exist without a customer, and its stage is never blank.Deal

Related terms