Electronic invoices: generalisation by 2020
- In its “New Digital Agenda for Europe”, the European Commission listed four priorities to make digital invoice exchanges easier:
- Provide a coherent legal framework,
- Make it profitable for all companies – including SMEs,
- Favour suited environment to optimise dematerialised exchanges coverage,
- Promote a conman standard for e-invoices.
- The Commission will then revise the Digital signature Directive in 2011 to enable mutual recognition of authentication systems and digital signatures in Europe.
- Its Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP) will also help targeted sectors elaborate interoperable procedures for dematerialised exchanges, along their logistic, document and data processing.
- The European Committee for Standardization will have to elaborate best practices on each player’s part and liability as well as on a consistent technology. It will list cross-industry invoice data model specifications, with relation to the ISO and United Nations (UN/CEFACT).
- The Commission has been trying to improve SEPA migration return of investment for years by adding invoice exchanges dematerialisation expected gains (e-SEPA). Its 2020 “Digital Agenda” strategy naturally revives the use of e-invoices.
- The announced revision relies on a prior study entrusted by the Commission to the European expert group on e-invoices (EEI), which handed over its conclusions on the improvement of existing solutions' interoperability end 2009. They recommended using the UN/CEFACT world standard.
- Proper consequences were then limited, the Commission takes advantage of the Digital Signature Directive reassessment to strengthen intents to deploy standard software offers, also accessible to the smaller companies.
See November-December 2009 Watch