Posted on 03.06.2022, 10:51
EESPA – the European e-Invoicing Service Provider Association – held its General Annual Meeting in Athens this week.
Two main themes were discussed at the meeting: Continuous Transaction Control (CTC) and interoperability with Peppol.
Continuous Transaction Control (CTC)
The implementation of Continuous Transactions Control (CTC) schemes is continuing across Europe. The development is driven by national Tax authorities who want to decrease the VAT gap that exist in many countries by getting access to real time data from the invoice flows between companies. The CTC schemes are often accompanied by national mandates to make electronic invoicing obligatory.
This development represents an opportunity for service providers as the adoption of e-invoicing increases. However, several countries have also introduced mandatory government platforms, demanding that all invoices pass through these central gateways with their own formats. For businesses looking for automation of their buyer-supplier relationships this is bad news. While tax authorities are interested in the invoice data, the supply chain automation potential is often left out of scope.
What we have seen is that when governments create separate mandatory solutions for electronic invoicing, automation becomes more difficult.
Interoperability with Peppol
For several years, EESPA has been working on establishing a network for interoperability between European service providers – the EESPA Interoperability Network (EIN). The concept of interoperability is commonplace in the Nordic region, but not in many other parts of Europe. The EIN is an attempt to change this and establish a network of service providers that can communicate. The EIN network is currently being tested by several of the service providers in EESPA.
The past nine months, EESPA and Peppol have been discussing whether it would be possible to cooperate on the infrastructure rather than establishing two separate infrastructures for distribution of electronic documents in Europe.
At the General Annual Meeting in Athens, EESPA decided to engage in an incubation project with OpenPeppol. EESPA has formulated a document with requirements that are not satisfied in Peppol today.
During the coming 12-18 months, the two organizations will work together to test the possibility of collaboration and see if it is possible to arrive at one common solution.