Agreement on syntaxes complying with the forthcoming European standard (EN) on Electronic Invoicing

The European Committee for Standardization’s (CEN) Technical Committee 434 (CEN/TC 434) was established in 2014 to define a European standard (EN) on Electronic Invoicing in the context of the Directive 2014/55/EU. Since its inception, CEN/TC 434 has undertaken a huge amount of work to this end as previously reported.

At a recent plenary meeting in Barcelona, CEN/TC 434 unanimously agreed to endorse UBL and CII as the syntaxes complying with the forthcoming EN and to be listed in a specific CEN Technical Specification (TS). Once the EN and TS are published by CEN and referenced in the  Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), contracting authorities and entities in the EU will have to receive and process electronic invoices which comply with the EN and any of the two syntaxes, in accordance with the provisions of Article 7 of Directive 2014/55/EU. 

The EN will also be tested as to its practical application for an enduser. The preparation of the test campaign is ongoing and will conclude shortly.

CEN's national members will hold a ballot early next year on the adoption of the EN and its ancillary standardisation documents. CEN will then publish the documents in the case of a positive result. The reference to the EN and the list of syntaxes will be successively published in the OJEU still during 2017.

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