Zeppol / Guides

EU e-invoicing mandates: every country, its status and its date

Published 27 August 2026 · every row checked against primary sources on 27 August 2026

There is no EU e-invoicing mandate. There are twenty-seven national ones at twenty-seven different stages, running on at least five incompatible delivery models, and the only thing they share is the invoice standard underneath. This page is the calendar: who must do what, by when, and what it runs on.

The short version

Every EU country, checked on 27 August 2026

Status is as at 27 August 2026. Where we have written a country explainer, the country name links to it. The last column answers the only question a Peppol shaped product can honestly answer: whether the network reaches that country's mandate at all.

Where Zeppol helps, and where it does not

Read the last column again, because it decides whether any Peppol product is relevant to you. Zeppol delivers over Peppol. That reaches Belgium's mandate, the invoice leg of Croatia's, one of Germany's permitted delivery routes, and the voluntary but widespread Peppol traffic in the Netherlands, the Nordics and most public sector invoicing across the EU.

It does not reach Italy, Romania, Poland, France, Spain, Greece, Hungary or Portugal. Those countries each require a national submission that a Peppol access point cannot make on your behalf. If you are established in one of them and invoicing domestically, you need software built for that country, and we would rather write that here than have you find out after installing something.

The same test is worth applying to the apps you will compare us against, because a tagline naming a network does not say which country it reaches. What Sufio and ElkSend actually reach is set out on their own comparison pages, with a source and a date against every claim.

What does carry across every row in the table is the invoice itself. Every mandate above, including the national ones, is built on or aligned to EN 16931, the European semantic standard. Turning a Shopify order into a real e-invoice with the buyer's company details and VAT number captured, VAT calculated per line, reverse charge applied where it belongs and the number checked against VIES is the half of the problem that is the same everywhere. The delivery leg is the half that is not.

The five delivery models, and why the difference matters

Countries are usually compared by date. The more useful comparison is by model, because the model decides how much of your existing work transfers when you add a country.

• Network. Belgium, and the Peppol traffic in the Netherlands and the Nordics. The invoice goes from your provider to the buyer's provider over a shared network. The state is not in the path.
• Clearance. Italy, Romania and Poland. The invoice goes to the state first, is validated there, and only then counts as an invoice. Nothing about the delivery leg transfers between them, because each state built its own.
• Approved platforms. France. A private platform is certified by the tax administration and sits between you and your buyer, with a state directory deciding where an invoice is routed.
• Reporting. Hungary and Bulgaria. The invoice is left alone; its data is sent to the tax authority separately. This is the model that most often gets described as e-invoicing when it is not.
• Format only. Germany. There is no platform at all. The obligation is about what the invoice is, not how it travels, so email with an attached XRechnung or ZUGFeRD file is compliant delivery.

What ViDA changes, and when

The older mandates in the table were each authorised by a country specific derogation from the VAT Directive, whose articles 218 and 232 let a buyer refuse an electronic invoice. Council Directive (EU) 2025/516, the VAT in the Digital Age package, removed that barrier when it entered into force in April 2025: member states may now mandate domestic e-invoicing without asking permission, and from July 2030 the same directive puts a common set of rules over cross-border intra-EU B2B trade.

What it does not do is unify the national systems already running. Italy's SdI and Poland's KSeF are not going away in 2030. ViDA and what it means for your store goes through the detail.

How to read this table if you sell into the EU from Shopify

• Find the country you are established in, not the countries you sell to. Almost every mandate above attaches to establishment, because that is the limit written into the EU rules that allow them. Selling into Italy from Germany does not put you inside the Italian mandate.
• Check whether you hold a VAT registration without an establishment. That usually means a reporting duty rather than an issuing duty, and it is the case most often got wrong.
• Then look at what your buyers need, separately from what the law needs. A Dutch or Belgian business customer will ask for a structured invoice long before any law makes you send one, and that demand is what actually drives adoption in the countries with no mandate at all.

EU B2B e-invoicing on Shopify covers the other half of this: how the invoice itself is put together, what has to be on it and how Shopify handles VAT. That page is the mechanism. This one is the calendar.

Frequently asked questions

This table is general information for Shopify merchants, not legal or tax advice. It was checked against primary sources on 27 August 2026: the European Commission's eInvoicing country factsheets, national tax administration publications, and the relevant EU legal acts. Mandates and deadlines in this area move often, and several of the dates above have already moved more than once, so confirm your own obligations with a qualified adviser in the country concerned before acting on anything here.