Which EU countries require e-invoicing, and when?
There is no single European deadline. Each member state legislates its own B2B mandate on its own timetable, and the dates move.
There is no one European date. Directive 2014/55/EU obliged public bodies across the EU to be able to receive structured e-invoices, and that is the only genuinely EU-wide obligation in force. Everything else, the B2B mandates people mean when they ask this question, is national law on national timetables, passed at different times and drafted differently.
So the honest answer is per country, and it carries a date it was last checked. Mandate dates slip: France’s slipped once, and the UK’s detail is still pending. A page stating a deadline without saying when it was verified is not telling you enough to act on.
The three markets with an imminent B2B obligation
Germany
| Date | What changes |
|---|---|
| 1 January 2025 | Every domestic business must be able to receive an EN 16931 e-invoice. |
| 1 January 2027 | Issuing becomes mandatory for businesses with prior-year turnover above EUR 800,000. |
| 1 January 2028 | Issuing becomes mandatory for all remaining domestic businesses except those under the small-business scheme (Kleinunternehmer). |
Paper invoices, and PDF invoices where the recipient consents, stay permitted for every business through 31 December 2026, and through 31 December 2027 for businesses with prior-year turnover up to EUR 800,000. Non-conforming EDI stays permitted through 31 December 2027 where the recipient consents (§ 27 Abs. 38 Nr. 3 UStG). In every phase, among other cases, invoices for supplies under the small-business scheme (§ 19 UStG), invoices up to EUR 250 gross and tickets need not be e-invoices. The European Commission country page says the 2028 date extends to all remaining businesses, so it is not the source here.
Last verified against the German Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) e-invoicing FAQ (as of March 2026) and § 27 Abs. 38 UStG on 20 October 2026. Official source.
France
| Date | What changes |
|---|---|
| 1 September 2026 | All businesses must be able to receive; large enterprises and mid-caps (ETI) must issue and e-report. |
| 1 September 2027 | Small and medium enterprises (PME) and micro-enterprises (TPE) must issue and e-report. |
The 1 September 2026 and 2027 calendar was reconfirmed in April 2025; a further delay was rejected. Dates can still move by decree, so re-confirm against DGFiP before relying on them.
Last verified against DGFiP's reform calendar on impots.gouv.fr (updated 16 January 2026) and the European Commission eInvoicing country page on 19 September 2026. Official source.
Belgium
| Date | What changes |
|---|---|
| 1 January 2026 | Issuing and receiving structured e-invoices is mandatory for domestic B2B. |
| 2028 | Planned: near-real-time reporting of invoice data to the tax administration, by the supplier and the customer alike. |
A three-month penalty tolerance ran to 31 March 2026 and has now passed. The 2028 e-reporting layer is not law yet: it comes from the federal coalition agreement, and the draft law the Council of Ministers approved on 18 July 2026 is still with the Data Protection Authority and the Council of State. That announcement names no start date, so 2028 is the year the authority gives and not a fixed day.
Last verified against the Belgian federal e-invoicing portal einvoice.belgium.be (the tolerance notice of 18 December 2025 and the e-reporting FAQ) and the Council of Ministers' press release of 18 July 2026 on the e-reporting draft law on 20 September 2026. Official source.
The rest
Beliq builds and validates for further markets whose B2B timelines sit further out, or where today’s obligation is a public-sector receive duty rather than a general B2B one: Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, whose regime is confirmed in outline and pre-confirmation in its detail. Each carries its own milestones, formats, pinned authority and verification stamp on the mandate calendar, which is the source this page renders from.
Some markets with active reforms are deliberately not on that list, because their detail is not settled or because Beliq does not pin their ruleset end to end. The clearance-model markets are the main examples.
Three things that trip people up
Receiving comes before issuing. Germany is the clearest case: the duty to be able to receive a structured e-invoice landed years before the duty to issue one, and it applied to every domestic business at once rather than phasing in by size. A company that reads only the issuing date discovers late that it has already been obliged to accept structured invoices from its suppliers.
A mandate is not a network. “Belgium requires e-invoicing” and “Belgium requires Peppol” are different statements, and the second is what determines what you have to procure. Some mandates route over the Peppol network, some through a certified national platform, some point-to-point. The format you generate and the channel you send over are separate decisions, and the mandate calendar states both per country.
The EU-wide date that does exist is later than most people think. ViDA introduces mandatory structured invoicing and digital reporting for cross-border B2B in 2030. It is not the reason your national deadline is in 2026 or 2027, and treating it as the horizon means missing the ones that arrive first.
Why the stamps are on the page
Every entry above renders from one dated source of truth, and each carries the authority it was checked against and the date of that check. That is deliberate. A stale date on a compliance vendor’s page is worse than no date, because a reader acts on it. Treat the stamp as a freshness signal and re-confirm against the linked authority before you commit a project plan to it.