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

Flowtly Editorial Team6 min

Status as of 4 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
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) — 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.
  • 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.

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 of
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. contract agreed with counterparty. contract attached to budget. budget covers project. invoice billed from project. project linked to budget. lead becomes counterparty. deal sold to counterparty.billed totaxed byspends againstowed toreconciled toimportsschedulesagreed withattached tocoversbilled fromlinked tobecomessold toIInvoice — A sales document issued to a client: line items, dates, tax. It is created, reviewed, previewed and then sent.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 linePProject — The core organizational unit for a business initiative, client engagement or internal work. Everything tracked — time, cost, invoicing, profitability — hangs off one.ProjectPProspect — 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