State of play
In May 2025, the European Commission adopted the single market strategy, which identified eInvoicing as one of its key digital enablers. The single market strategy is an initiative designed to strengthen and modernise the European Union's internal market by removing barriers, fostering innovation, and supporting the seamless movement of goods, services, capital, and people across EU countries.
eInvoicing is already making transactions more efficient and secure, reducing administrative burden, enhancing business competitiveness, and strengthening the EU economy.
To meet both current and future demands, eInvoicing is set to enable the automation of a wide range of business processes, including VAT reporting, customs declarations and environmental and social and governance (ESG) reporting, thus further streamlining financial and compliance operations. These advancements will make these processes even smoother, improve compliance and support better governance across the single market.
What is eInvoicing?
eInvoicing, or electronic invoicing is the process of exchanging invoices in a structured, machine-readable electronic format that allows for automatic and electronic processing between a supplier and a buyer.
Adopted on 16 April 2014, the Electronic Invoicing in Public Procurement Directive mandated that by the final deadline of April 2020, all public authorities must be able to receive and process EU standard-compliant electronic invoices for public contracts that exceed the EU's public procurement official threshold. This applies to contracts where the following public procurement directives below apply.
Following the adoption of this directive, the European Standard EN 16931-1 was established, to ensure consistency and interoperability across different systems by defining the core elements of an eInvoice.
This standard, among other elements, specifies the essential information required for invoice processing (semantics) and a specific set of machine-readable languages (list of syntaxes). eInvoicing enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and supports cross-border transactions in public procurement and B2B transactions.
To find out how to implement eInvoicing in your business, please visit this webpage from the European Commission's Digital Building Blocks programme, which offers a set of eInvoicing guidelines and resources.
eInvoicing in the 2025 Single Market Strategy
The core of the 2025 single market strategy is a powerful commitment to simplifying the daily operations of businesses and administrations across the EU. eInvoicing is playing a vital role in reducing administrative burden to make it easier for these organisations to innovate, grow, and trade across borders.
The 2024 Report on the effects of Directive 2014/55/EU indicates that while progress has been made, significant challenges are hindering the full automation of invoice processing and exchange. The limited adoption of eInvoicing among EU businesses, low uptake of the EU eInvoicing standard, and low reuse of eInvoicing data for other business processes prevents companies from fully realising the efficiency gains of a digitalised economy.
To overcome these challenges and realise the full potential of a data-driven economy, the Strategy outlines a set of concrete actions designed to increase eInvoicing deployment. These measures include
eInvoicing enables seamless automation of VAT reporting, which could happen real-time, removing manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors. By establishing a link from a company's invoicing system to the national tax authority's digital reporting platform, businesses can ensure timely and accurate compliance with VAT regulations, while public authorities benefit from improved oversight and faster processing.
Through eInvoicing, customs processes can be streamlined through automation of some tasks, allowing relevant data to flow directly from invoices to customs systems. This innovation simplifies cross-border trade, reduces paperwork, and accelerates goods movement.
With eInvoicing, essential data for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting is captured automatically, supporting organisations in meeting sustainability requirements with minimal effort.
Leveraging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation, eInvoicing enables predictive tax models, which combined with human verification, would lead to an improved fraud detection. This is particularly relevant in addressing VAT revenue loss (the 'VAT Gap'), which was estimated at EUR 93 billion in the EU in 2020.
eInvoicing enables rapid, accurate processing by directly integrating invoice data into payment and accounting systems, leading to faster payments, fewer errors, enhanced fraud detection, and substantial savings on printing, postage, archiving, and administrative tasks.
eInvoicing solutions are scalable, allowing SMEs to manage increasing invoice volumes effortlessly and benefit from reduced administrative costs, supporting their competitiveness in the Single Market.
For more information on the positive impacts of eInvoicing on EU competitiveness, please visit our DIGITAL eInvoicing benefits page.
How has eInvoicing evolved to keep up with emerging trends and needs?
The 2014 directive marked an important step towards promoting the uptake of electronic invoicing in the European Union. Since then, multiple market-driven advancements have emerged, creating the need for the policymakers to ensure that the directive remains relevant in the dynamic digital environment
In the EU, the directive provided the regulatory foundation for the European Commission's cooperation with the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) to create the European electronic invoicing standard, with the CEN reference EN 16931-1.
In 2025, the standard was updated by CEN to align with the requirements introduced by the VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) package. ViDA introduces the principle of a uniform, real-time digital reporting of VAT based on eInvoicing, providing EU countries with timely and valuable information needed to step up the fight against VAT fraud.
Since the adoption of the ViDA package in March 2025, Member States have the possibility to introduce mandatory eInvoicing in their country. This allows individual nations to proceed with domestic B2B eInvoicing mandates. The harmonised, EU-wide obligation applies specifically to cross-border transactions. In this case, using structured eInvoicing coupled with near real-time digital reporting will become mandatory from 1 July 2030.
For more information, please visit DG TAXUD page on ViDA.
How does it work at European and national level?
The eInvoicing Directive mandated a final deadline of April 2020 for all public authorities to be able to receive and process EU standard-compliant electronic invoices. The directive has reduced trade barriers arising from different national legal requirements and technical standards for electronic invoicing.
The European Commission’s eInvoicing Country Factsheets provide comprehensive information on the eInvoicing policies and practices of all 27 EU countries and 4 additional European Economic Area (EEA) countries. Please check the relevant factsheet for information on a country’s
- policy framework
- eInvoicing platform (if existing)
- approach for receiving and processing electronic invoices
- monitoring eInvoicing implementation
- use of Core Invoicing Usage Specifications (CIUS)
- digital reporting requirements
How does eInvoicing facilitate everyday business transactions?
By introducing the single, harmonised EU standard EN 16931-1 that every public administration must accept, eInvoicing brings uniformity across the EU. This mandatory acceptance of a common invoice format offers greater certainty to economic operators and government suppliers, as they can be confident their invoices will be processed regardless of the EU country they are working with.
As a result, it becomes much simpler for businesses to supply goods, services, and works to public administrations in different EU Member States, since they can use the same electronic invoice type across borders.
To support the widespread adoption of electronic invoicing in the EU, the European Commission offers relevant resources to all EU stakeholders
- mandating and funding standardisation organisations (ex. CEN & CENELEC)
- providing support by offering a set of services, workshops and other tools made available on the DIGITAL website.
- developing free, reusable digital tools (Building Blocks) like the official eInvoice validator and conformance tests, as well as other Building Blocks such as eDelivery.
International adoption of eInvoicing
The EU is making significant efforts to promote global eInvoicing interoperability through active international cooperation. This includes promoting the EU model for eInvoicing, which uses the European eInvoicing standard and Peppol technical specifications as a reliable framework for facilitating cross-border trade.
The EU's international outreach is already yielding significant results. See the examples below.
FTAs are an excellent opportunity to harmonise eInvoicing processes across borders.
The EU's commitment to achieving interoperability with its partners is demonstrated by the agreement with New Zealand -in force since May 2024 - and the ongoing eInvoicing discussions with India, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
DTAs and digital partnerships are another tool for achieving deeper technical alignment on eInvoicing. This advanced engagement is best exemplified by the EU’s cooperation with its key Asian partners.
The EU’s first DTA t was signed in May 2025 with Singapore, and negotiations for a similar DTA with South Korea have been concluded.
Active Digital Partnerships with Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, provide a framework for ongoing cooperation and have already produced tangible outcomes, such as the eInvoicing pilot project between the Netherlands and Singapore.
These are another crucial element for achieving international alignment on eInvoicing.
A prime example of this success is cooperation with Taiwan. Following Trade and Investment Dialogues that began in 2022, Taiwan adopted the European eInvoicing system, and in September 2025 successfully became a Peppol Authority.
Leveraging its successful track record in eInvoicing cooperation with key trade partners, the EU is continually promoting the European model on a global scale.
Promoting an eInvoicing infrastructure that is interoperable with the European model offers the opportunity to minimise costs for EU businesses when trading outside Europe. It also maximises the returns on investments and implementations already carried out.
For this reason, the Commission will continue its efforts to foster the international adoption of the European model. Further agreements and partnerships will open new markets for EU companies and increasing their global competitiveness.
The Digital Europe Programme
Previously managed under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the eInvoicing Building Block has, since 2022, continued and developed eInvoicing initiatives within the scope of the digital Europe programme (DIGITAL) - the EU funding programme focused on bringing digital technology to businesses, citizens and public administrations.
The eInvoicing Building Block is a suite of tools and services from the European Commission designed to help Member States' public administrations and solution providers comply with the mandatory European Standard on eInvoicing (Directive 2014/55/EU). To achieve this, it provides the essential resources for interoperability, including the standard itself (EN 16931), an online validation service, conformance testing for software and dedicated technical support.
Alongside eInvoicing, other building blocks include eDelivery, eID, eSignature, and eArchiving, each addressing a specific need for secure and standardised digital transactions within the Digital Europe Programme framework.
These Building Blocks are reusable digital solutions provided by the European Commission, which can be integrated into various public and private sector applications to ensure interoperability, security, and efficiency.
By adopting these building blocks, organisations can more easily develop digital services that function seamlessly across the EU, reducing the duplication of efforts and accelerating digital transformation.
For more information on the eInvoicing Building Block, please visit our eInvoicing DIGITAL website.
