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European eInvoicing Standard: Final Vote on Invoice Core Model & List of Syntaxes

 The European Commission is delighted to announce that a decision has been taken on the European eInvoicing standard (EN), pursuant to Directive 2014/55/EU on eInvoicing in public procurement. 

The European Commission mandated the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) to define the eInvoicing European standard. Following intense deliberations, CEN has duly announced the results concerning the invoice core model and syntaxes:

  • The EN 16931-1 (invoice core model) approved with 25 positive votes, no negative votes (100%);
  • The CEN/TS 16931-2 (list of syntaxes) approved with 24 positive votes, no negative votes (100%);

 

In light of a successful vote building on the excellent work of CEN, the Committee is on track to publish the final standard in the coming months. Once this has been achieved, the real work of supporting eInvoicing, respecting the European standard, can begin.

 

Benefits

 

eInvoicing reduces costs for economic operators and the environmental impact of paper-based invoices. The creation of a European standard for eInvoicing in public procurement prevents the continued proliferation of eInvoicing standards and syntaxes coexisting in the Member States, which leads to increased complexity in term of cross-border interoperability.

 

On 31 January 2017, the European Commission launched the eInvoicing Readiness Checker, a tool designed for Public Entities to assess their compliance with the Directive 2014/55/EU electronic invoicing in public procurement.

 

The online tool, a key service of the CEF eInvoicing building block allows Public Entities to check their level of readiness to exchange eInvoices with Service & Solution Providers in compliance with the Directive, and receive recommendations on what the next steps are to be compliant. Users of the tool can achieve this by creating a profile, either as a Public Entity or Service & Solution Provider.

 

The CEF eInvoicing building block promotes the uptake and accelerates the use of eInvoicing in full compliance with the European standard, amongst both public and private entities established in the EU.

 

The European Commission also supports eInvoicing with grant funding. Funding from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) helps applicants put the appropriate technical solutions and organisational set-up in place to ensure that authorities can receive and process eInvoices, respecting the coming standard. Owing to the high-demand for grant funding to support eInvoicing, the European Commission has increased the indicative level of funding to €10 million in 2017. See the CEF Telecom Work Programme for more!