EU e-invoicing mandates: the deadlines, country by country

Germany, France and Belgium are moving business invoices from PDF to e-invoices, with EU-wide rules following in 2030. Here’s where each country stands.

10 min read

If you invoice other businesses in Europe, you’ve probably heard that PDF invoices are on their way out. That’s true, but it’s happening one country at a time, on different dates and under different rules, and the headlines rarely tell you which of them apply to you.

We build Sablora, an invoicing tool for freelancers and small businesses, so we’ve had to work through all of this to get our own e-invoices right. This post is the short version, for anyone who’d rather not read the German finance ministry’s FAQ themselves. We checked every date against the official sources listed at the end on 4 October 2026. These rules do move, so keep an eye on the date at the top if you’re reading this much later.

Key dates

  1. Germany In force

    Every business must be able to receive e-invoices.

  2. Belgium In force

    Businesses send and receive e-invoices between themselves, over Peppol by default.

  3. France In force

    Every business must be able to receive e-invoices; large and mid-sized companies must send them.

  4. Germany Upcoming

    Businesses with more than €800,000 turnover must send e-invoices.

  5. France Upcoming

    Small and micro businesses must send e-invoices too.

  6. Germany Upcoming

    Businesses under €800,000 turnover must send e-invoices too.

  7. Belgium Upcoming

    Invoice data is also reported to the tax authority.

  8. EU Upcoming

    Invoices for business sales between EU countries must be e-invoices, each one reported to the tax authority.

  9. Netherlands Planned

    E-invoices for sales between Dutch businesses.

What counts as an e-invoice?

Not a PDF. In EU terms, an e-invoice is the invoice as structured data: who’s selling, who’s buying, each line, the VAT and the totals, in a format accounting software can read without anyone retyping it. The format is set by a European standard, EN 16931, which dates from 2017 and sits underneath every rule in this post.

The standard describes what an invoice has to contain, not what it looks like. In practice it travels as XML, in one of two flavours: UBL, which is what the Peppol network uses, or UN/CEFACT CII. You’ll also come across Germany’s XRechnung and the Peppol BIS format Belgium uses. Both are stricter rule sets built on the same standard.

Then there are hybrid invoices. Factur-X (France) and ZUGFeRD (Germany) are the same specification under two names: a PDF/A-3 file, which is PDF’s archival variant, with the EN 16931 XML tucked inside it. Your customer opens it and sees a normal invoice, while their accounting software reads the XML. If the two ever disagree, the XML is what counts. The German finance ministry spells that out in its FAQ.

A plain PDF doesn’t count, however neatly it’s made. Neither does a scanned invoice, or one typed into the body of an email.

Germany

Receiving
Every business, since 1 January 2025
Sending
Over €800,000 turnover from 2027, everyone else from 2028
Formats
XRechnung, or ZUGFeRD 2.0.1 and later
How it’s sent
Any way you like, email included

Since 1 January 2025, every business in Germany has had to be able to receive e-invoices from other German businesses. That sounds like more than it is: the finance ministry says an email inbox is enough.

Sending is being phased in. Until the end of 2026, anyone can still send paper or PDF invoices, although a PDF needs the customer’s agreement. From 1 January 2027, businesses whose turnover was over €800,000 the year before have to send e-invoices to other German businesses. From 1 January 2028, the same goes for everyone else. The threshold looks at the previous year, so it’s your 2026 turnover that decides whether your deadline is 2027 or 2028.

XRechnung and ZUGFeRD both count, as long as the ZUGFeRD file is version 2.0.1 or later and doesn’t use one of its two slimmest profiles, MINIMUM and BASIC-WL, which leave out too much. The law doesn’t care how the invoice travels, so email is fine. Some invoices are out of scope altogether: invoices to consumers, small invoices up to €250, tickets, and invoices from businesses using the small-business scheme (Kleinunternehmer). Those businesses still have to be able to receive e-invoices, though.

One thing that’s easy to miss is that you have to keep what you send. German rules require a copy of every invoice for eight years, and for an e-invoice that means keeping the XML in its original form. A printout of the PDF isn’t enough.

On the sending side, Germany is where Sablora covers you completely. Our e-invoices are Factur-X in the EN 16931 profile, which is the same thing as ZUGFeRD 2, and they go out by email, which the German rules allow. What we don’t do is keep the archive for you. More on that below.

France

Receiving
Every business, since 1 September 2026
Sending
Large and mid-sized companies since 1 September 2026, everyone else from 1 September 2027
Formats
Factur-X, UBL or CII
How it’s sent
Through an accredited platform (PA)

The French reform started on 1 September 2026. Since then, every VAT-registered business established in France, micro-entrepreneurs included, has had to be able to receive e-invoices. Large and mid-sized companies also have to send them and report their transaction data to the tax authority. Small and micro businesses have until 1 September 2027 to start sending.

The big difference from Germany is that France fixes the route as well as the format. Invoices have to be Factur-X, UBL or CII, and they have to go through a plateforme agréée (PA), a private platform accredited by the tax authority. You may have seen them called PDPs, which was their old name. Once your sending date arrives, emailing an invoice straight to another French business no longer counts, even if it’s a perfectly valid Factur-X file.

Sablora produces Factur-X, so the format is right, but Sablora is not a PA and can’t deliver through one. If you’re a French business invoicing other French businesses, you’ll need a PA for those invoices. Sales to consumers and to customers outside France aren’t e-invoiced at all. They’re reported through your PA instead.

Belgium

Receiving and sending
Businesses established in Belgium, since 1 January 2026
Format
Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 (EN 16931)
How it’s sent
Peppol, unless both sides agree on another channel
Next
Reporting to the tax authority from 2028

Belgium’s rules have applied since 1 January 2026. VAT-registered businesses established in Belgium have to send and receive structured e-invoices for sales to each other. The default route is Peppol, a network you join through a certified access-point provider. Two businesses can agree to use another channel, as long as the invoices follow EN 16931, but every business still has to be reachable on Peppol. There was a three-month grace period, which ended on 31 March 2026, and fines now start at €1,500. From 2028, invoice data will also be reported to the tax authority.

Sablora does not send over Peppol, so it can’t be your channel for invoices to other Belgian businesses. Invoices to customers outside Belgium, and to consumers, aren’t covered by the Belgian rule.

The Netherlands

Nothing is mandatory in the Netherlands yet, but the plan is now on the table. On 11 September 2026 the government sent parliament its outline: e-invoicing for sales between Dutch businesses from 1 July 2030, at the same time as the EU’s cross-border rule, and digital reporting from 1 July 2031. Only EN 16931 invoices will count, and businesses on the small-business scheme (KOR) stay exempt. Whether Peppol becomes compulsory hasn’t been decided. A draft bill is due out for public consultation this autumn, and the aim is to have the law passed before July 2028.

The format is already settled, and it’s the one Sablora uses today.

Cross-border invoices from July 2030

The EU package behind all of this is called VAT in the Digital Age, or ViDA (Directive 2025/516), and it has been in force since 14 April 2025. Two parts of it matter for small businesses. First, it lets each country make e-invoicing compulsory at home without asking Brussels for permission, which is why new national deadlines keep turning up. Second, from 1 July 2030, invoices for business sales between EU countries will have to be EN 16931 e-invoices, issued within ten days of the sale, with each transaction reported to the tax authority. That reporting replaces the EC Sales List. Countries that already run their own systems have until 2035 to bring them in line with the EU model.

Sablora already issues the EN 16931 invoice that ViDA asks for. It doesn’t report anything to tax authorities, though.

Italy and Poland

Italy has required e-invoices between businesses since 2019, all sent through the tax authority’s own exchange system, SdI. Poland followed this year with KSeF: the largest taxpayers from 1 February, most other businesses from 1 April, and micro businesses from 1 January 2027. Both route every invoice through a government platform, and Sablora isn’t connected to either.

Should you switch before you have to?

If you’re in Germany, we’d say yes, and not just because we sell the software. Your customers are already required to accept e-invoices, so sending one doesn’t ask anything of them. A hybrid Factur-X invoice also still opens as a normal PDF, so a customer whose accounting setup can’t use the XML yet won’t notice a difference.

The more practical reason is that e-invoices are less forgiving than PDFs. A PDF will happily go out with a missing VAT number or half an address. An e-invoice fails validation. Switch early and you find those gaps in your customer data while nothing depends on it, instead of in the week your deadline arrives.

It’s also work you only do once. Whether your invoices end up travelling by email, over Peppol or through a French platform, the document underneath is EN 16931 everywhere, including under the EU’s 2030 rule. Once your invoices are in that shape, what’s left is the question of how they’re delivered.

In France and Belgium that delivery question is the bigger one. The decision that matters there is which platform or Peppol provider you use, and it’s worth making well before your deadline.

What Sablora does, and what it doesn’t

You turn e-invoicing on under Settings → Profile. From then on, every invoice and credit note goes out as a Factur-X PDF: the invoice your customer reads, with the EN 16931 XML inside the same file.

The XML carries the details buyers’ systems use to route and book an invoice: your reference and their purchase order number (a German Leitweg-ID goes in the buyer reference), company and VAT registration numbers, the unit on each line, and the legal reason when you charge no VAT because of a reverse charge or an exemption. Credit notes point to the invoice they correct. The PDF and the XML are generated from the same invoice, and our tests check that their totals match to the cent. Before each release, every kind of document we produce is run through the official EN 16931 and Factur-X validation rules, and the PDF through the PDF/A-3 checks. E-invoicing is included on every plan, the free one too.

To produce an e-invoice we need your business name, full address and VAT number, the customer’s name and country (plus their VAT number for a reverse charge), and an invoice in your country’s currency. That last one is because the VAT has to be stated in your local currency, and we’d rather not guess an exchange rate on a tax document. If anything is missing, the invoice still goes out as a regular PDF, and Sablora tells you what to fix.

What we don’t do: send over Peppol or through a French PA, report to tax authorities, or keep an archive of the files we send. That last point matters in Germany, where keeping your invoices for eight years is your job. Between German businesses, though, email is all the law asks for, and that’s what Sablora uses.

Sources

This post summarises the rules as they stood on 4 October 2026. It’s not legal or tax advice, so check with your tax adviser how they apply to your business.