Europe(a)! It's the Final Countdown........ until the European standard deadline
On Tuesday 4 December 2018, the Connecting European Facility (CEF) eInvoicing team held an event in Brussels to mark the four months' countdown to the deadline to comply with the European standard on eInvoicing on 18 April 2019.
Over 80 private and public organisation representatives participated in the event to exchange their eInvoicing implementation experiences, hear eInvoicing updates from the European Commission and, most of all, to connect with each other to realise eInvoicing.
“ The Final Countdown has started! We are delighted with the result of the event today. The Member States have worked hard in the past months, some already years, to realise eInvoicing and we are confident that the next four months until the deadline will deliver promising eInvoicing implementation results.”
Irena Riviere-Osipov
Policy Officer
DG GROW, European Commission
The event
The event kicked off with a panel discussion where guest speakers were “quizzed” about the highlights of their eInvoicing implementation experiences; questions varied from technical to policy related topics, to ‘which song best describes your eInvoicing implementation experience’, to which one speaker responded by composing a rap with hastags!
The first panel was followed by critical updates from EU policy officers; one on the status of the imminent IPR agreement between the Commission and the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), followed by updates on the CEF managed Code lists, such as the publication of the Electronic Address Scheme (EAS). Code lists are essential information elements that must be included in electronic invoices to enable cross-border exchange, information may include time, date and text.
Furthermore, speakers updated attendees on the CEF eInvoicing conformance testing service, which allows solution and service providers and public entities to compliance test their eInvoicing solution against the standard. The Commission further noted the release of a new implementation checklist to help public administration ensure that they have covered the main elements expected for the eInvoicing Directive's transposition. Andrea Caccia, Chair of CEN/TC 434 and Member of EMFSEI, provided an update on the work of CEN in terms of the work of its various working groups and highlighted the developments of CEN’s CIUS methodologies, syntax bindings and the use of Open Source solutions.
eInvoicing implementation status
Ahead of the deadline, Sweden, Germany, Italy and Norway presented their national eInvoicing implementation journey and how they are successfully mandating eInvoicing in their legislation. Norway's speaker, André Hoddevik, provided an update on PEPPOL. This session was followed by lively discussion and debate. Highlights for this session included how Italy mandated B2B eInvoicing as part of its implementation along with the presentation of Germany's complex eInvoicing legislative process; the transposition of the eInvoicing directive effectively requires 17 laws (1 federal and 16 at state level).
CEF eInvoicing services
CEF eInvoicing continues to offer services to help Member States successfully implement eInvoicing, one such service is local eInvoicing trainings. The trainers, Christian Vindige and Martin Forsberg, introduced the available training packages. Trainings are free of charge information session on the eInvoicing Directive and the European standard and can be customised to the Member States needs and wants. In addition, they highlighted the existence of previously recorded webinar material on eInvoicing trainings available for re-use.
An eInvoicing workshop
A breakout session enabled participants to engage in an animated workshop to discuss how the derivative use of the European standard can support Member States in their work, share lessons learnt and implementation experiences. Attendees discussions varied from topics such as IPR, translation into UBL, the four corner model and the role of PEPPOL and promoting its use. The positive environmental impact of eInvoicing was praised while common obstacles such as mandating suppliers to use eInvoicing and the hurdles of exchanging pdf eInvoices were discussed too. Overall, the workshops provided an excellent platform for a European discussion between private and public representatives on the eInvoicing implementation.
Share your eInvoicing Success
Michael Scanlon, CEF eInvoicing team, also encouraged participants to join and be active on the eInvoicing User Community and the many resources that the CEF SMO and community produces such as the Country factsheets on eInvoicing, the eInvoicing Implementation Checklist and the Success Stories. Participants were encouraged to share their eInvoicing Success Stories with CEF, to share how CEF faciliates eInvoicing implementation and how other Member States can succeed too. All stories can be shared with the team at cef-building-blocks@ec.europa.eu.
When all is said and done
The CEF eInvoicing team is ready for the final countdown; fourth months until the deadline and CEF services continue to be available for private and public entities implementing eInvoicing in Europe.
@Giorgio Cacciaguerra, Caroline Corneau and Michael Scanlon, CEF eInvoicing
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