Belgium (2017 eInvoicing Country Sheet)

Legislation

The federal law modifying the VAT code of 17.12.2012 puts eInvoicing on an equal footing with paper invoicing, legalising the use of eInvoices as of 1 January 2013.

The law links the use of eInvoices with the willingness of the receivers to process it. This law does not mandate the use of eInvoices in B2G procurement.

The regional government of Flanders decided in 2016 to make the use of eInvoices in B2G procurement mandatory as of 1 January 2017 for all its regional entities.

The federal government decided to make use of eInvoices in B2G procurement mandatory as of 1 January 2017 for all federal entities, for contracts above €135k.

The main entity of the Government of the Brussels Region now accepts eInvoices, but does not make it mandatory yet.

The other regional governments in Belgium will follow and soon enable the receiving and processing of eInvoices.

eInvoicing platform and management solutions

In Belgium, electronic invoices must be submitted through the Mercurius platform. Mercurius is a federal platform that receives all invoices destined for all Belgian public authorities (central, regional and local), and makes them available to the receiving party. This platform has a web interface that allows any sender to check the status of his/her invoices. This web interface is also accessible to intermediates/service providers and customer representatives, so that all parties share the same “track and trace” information.

The Mercurius Platform is a B2G eInvoicing solution based on the ePRIOR platform, which was developed and used by the European Commission. At the end of its pilot phase, Belgium decided to integrate Mercurius with the PEPPOL interoperability framework, official as of 1 April 2016, going one step further towards interoperability with the private sector. 

Approach for receiving and processing

Mercurius centralizes the reception of eInvoices to the public sector, so Economic operators are sure to be able to send all their e-invoices to any public institution using the same method. The processing of eInvoices, however, is not harmonised. Each public contracting authority is free to apply the processing that best fits its own context. On the other hand,  contracting authorities recognize the value of streamlining their processing. A best practices exchange and reflection group is established for this purpose.

Economic operators can submit an electronic invoice in two ways:

1. By applying the PEPPOL interoperability framework.
2. for the ones not yet able to apply the PEPPOL framework: by using the invoice manual submission form available on the Mercurius platform (only for Belgian operators)

The major eInvoicing service providers in Belgium include Babelway, Basware, CodaBox, Advalvas, Unified Post, B2Bboost, Ixor, Edicom and TIE Kinetix.

Additional information

The Belgian government intends to take advantage of the PEPPOL Interoperability framework to implement the eInvoicing Directive, in order to offer practical solutions to economic operators, and to promote their reuse for B2B eInvoicing.

VALIDATED BY THE EMSFEI MEMBER

Last updated:  Dec 05, 2017 18:33