The new directive sets out to ensure the acceptance by tax authorities of e-invoices under the same conditions as for paper invoices, and to remove legal obstacles to the transmission and storage of e-invoices.

It also comprises measures to help tax authorities ensure that tax is paid so as to better tackle VAT fraud. These include establishing deadlines for the issuance of invoices, thus enabling speedier exchange of information on intra-EU supplies of goods and services.
Current EU provisions on VAT invoicing have led to a less-than-harmonised set of rules, on account of the many options that remain available to the member states. The aims of current provisions have therefore not been fully met.

Furthermore, compliance with regulatory requirements has hindered the take-up of technologies that are necessary for the development of e-invoicing. The Commission estimates potential annual cost savings for businesses at up to EUR 18 billion if obstacles to e-invoicing in VAT rules were to be removed.

Read all about it here

The European Commission has published the feedback statement summarising the responses received to its public consultations on the Final report of the Expert Group on Electronic Invoicing.
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The consultation invited stakeholders to react on the recommendations proposed by the Expert Group on e-Invoicing in the areas of business requirements, legal framework, interoperability and standards, as well as the proposed approach for implementation and communication.
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The feedback statement summarises the wide range of views expressed by 87 diverse stakeholders. The feedback statement, together with all contributions authorised for publication, are available at:

http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/payments/einvoicing/index_en.htm

“In the 21st century, information and communication technologies have a crucial role to play in creating sustainable jobs and boosting Europe’s economic growth, as outlined in the Europe 2020 Strategy, and so contributing to our economic recovery and long-term prosperity.

While the ICT sector is responsible for 5 per cent of European GDP it is responsible for no less than 50 per cent of our productivity growth.

Digital technologies also have a key role to play in improving people’s daily lives, for example in terms of increasing consumer choice, better access to information, entertainment and other services, improving healthcare and tackling environmental challenges like climate change.

To quote Harvard Professor Yochai Benkler, “We have an opportunity to change the way we create and exchange information, knowledge, and culture. By doing so, we can make the twenty first century one that offers individuals greater autonomy, political communities greater democracy, and societies greater opportunities for cultural self-reflection and human connection.”

This explains why the European Commission is today launching an ambitious Digital Agenda for Europe to maximise the potential of ICT to boost Europe’s prosperity and the well-being of its citizens.

The Digital Agenda for Europe outlines seven priority areas for action:

• creating a digital Single Market
• greater interoperability
• boosting internet trust and security
• much faster internet access
• more investment in research and development
• enhancing digital literacy skills and inclusion and
• applying information and communications technologies to address challenges facing society like climate change and the ageing population.

To give you some examples, within a Digital Single Market, citizens should be able to enjoy commercial services and cultural entertainment across borders. But EU online markets are still separated by barriers which hamper access to pan-European telecoms services, digital services and content. Today there are four times as many music downloads in the US as in the EU because of the lack of legal offers and fragmented markets. The Commission therefore intends to open up access to legal online content by simplifying copyright clearance, management and cross-border licensing. Other actions include making electronic payments and invoicing easier and simplifying online dispute resolution.

We need to improve ICT standard-setting and interoperability so that ICT products and services are open and interoperable.

To enhance trust and security so that Europeans can feel confident and safe online, we propose for example a better coordinated European response to cyber-attacks, identity theft and spam, and reinforced rules on personal data protection.

To improve Europeans’ access to fast and ultra fast internet, the Commission will for example explore how to attract investment in broadband through credit enhancement mechanisms and will give guidance on how to encourage investment in fibre-based networks.

To boost cutting-edge research and innovation in ICT, the Digital Agenda aims to for example leverage private investments with European regional funding and increasing EU research funding to ensure that Europe keeps up with and even surpasses its competition.

To empower all Europeans with digital skills and accessible online services, the Commission will for example propose digital literacy and competences as a priority for the European Social Fund regulation (2014-2020) and develop tools to identify and recognise the competences of ICT practitioners and users.

Finally, to unleash the potential of ICT to benefit society, the Digital Agenda will promote the smart use of ICTs and the exploitation of information to seek solutions to reduce energy consumption for example through smart meters and ICT-based light management systems, support ageing citizens, empower patients and improve online access for people with disabilities.

To reach the Digital Agenda’s objectives, we outline some 100 specific follow-up actions, including some 31 legislative proposals.

We intend to measure progress on achieving these objectives with specific targets. For example:

by 2013, broadband coverage for all EU citizens and, by 2020, fast broadband coverage at 30 Mega Bytes per second for all EU citizens, with at least half European households subscribing to broadband access at 100 Mega Bytes per second

by 2015, 50 per cent of the EU population should be shopping online, with 20% of the population using cross-border online services

by 2015, regular internet use increased from 60 per cent to 75 per cent, and in the case of disadvantaged people from 41per cent to 60 per cent

by 2015, halve the proportion of people who have never used the internet (from 30 per cent to 15 per cent)

by 2015, 50 per cent of EU citizens should be using online public services, with more than half of them returning filled in forms via the internet

by 2020, doubling EU Member States’ total annual public spending on ICT Research and Development to €11 billion.

Ensuring rapid adoption and implementation of the measures necessary to meet the Digital Agenda’s objectives is a tough challenge. In the coming months and years, my fellow Commissioners and I will work together with the EU’s institutions and stakeholders at all levels in all Member States to make the Digital Agenda a reality.

The digital world affects us all – there is no choice about that. But we can take the decision to use these changes to boost European growth, jobs and the well-being of our citizens. That is the decision the Commission is taking today, and we call on all those with a stake in this digital future for Europe to join us in moving forward.”

Source: http://europa.eu

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As we published last week, the European Ministers of Finance (ECOFIN) decided for new rules to harmonize and simplify the European VAT invoicing rules. The draft proposal is alleged to have missed a historic opportunity for a breakthrough of cross border e-invoicing in Europe.
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This decision has  caused a strong response. For a great deal, these reactions were negative of nature because the legislation appears to be stricter than initially proposed: it’s the world of e-invoicing upside down.

Trustweaver has composed an analysis of the changes around e-invoicing based on the decision. Also, the final version of the new regulation has been published. Both the decision of the Council of the European Union and the Trustweaver analysis are published below.

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If you can’t see the SlideShare upload, click here

If you can’t see the SlideShare upload, click here

Upside down
The proposal has been subject to continuous discussion last year by the Tax Departments of the 27 EU Member States. On March 16, 2010 they reached an agreement. In the current proposed article 233 the authenticity of the origin, the integrity of the content gets company with yet another requirement: the legibility of an invoice. These three main requirements are even extended to paper invoices. This is the world upside down compared to what the Commission originally proposed. The new rules also don’t prevent Member States not to impose additional conditions to paper invoices.

Harmonisation
The draft directive sets out to ensure the acceptance by tax authorities of e-invoices under the same conditions as for paper invoices, and to remove legal obstacles to the transmission and storage of e-invoices. It also allows e-invoicing to be implemented differently across member states. This could enhance differences between Member States and could cushion adoption of cross border e-invoicing unless service providers providers sufficient tools and service.

Current draft article 233

Article 233

1. The authenticity of the origin, the integrity of the content and the legibility of an invoice, whether in paper or in electronic form, shall be ensured from the point in time of issue until the end of the period for storage of the invoice.

Each taxable person shall determine the way to ensure the authenticity of the origin, the integrity of the content and the legibility of the invoice. This can be achieved by any business controls which create a reliable audit trail between an invoice and a supply.

“The authenticity of the origin” shall mean the assurance of the identity of the supplier or the issuer of the invoice.

“The integrity of the content” shall mean that the content required according to this Directive has not been altered.

2. Other than through the type of business controls described in the second subparagraph of paragraph 1, the following are examples of technologies that ensure the authenticity of the origin and the integrity of the content of an electronic invoice:

-by means of an advanced electronic signature within the meaning of point (2) of Article 2 of Directive 1999/93/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 1999 on a Community framework for electronic signatures, based on a qualified certificate and created by a secure signature creation device, within the meaning of points (6) and (10) of Article 2 of Directive 1999/93/EC.

-by means of electronic data interchange (EDI), as defined in Article 2 of Commission Recommendation 1994/820/EC of 19 October 1994 relating to the legal aspects of electronic data interchange, if the agreement relating to the exchange provides for the use of procedures guaranteeing the authenticity of the origin and integrity of the data.”

They wrote to the EU Expert Group shortly before its closure. Their comments and suggestions were not taken on board. Still, they find their positions reflected in many of the comments submitted to the Final Report of the Expert Group.

As outlined in the Open Letter underneath, they believe that a number of the base assumptions behind recent policy initiatives and in particular the Commission’s proposal for modifying the VAT Directive’s rules on e-invoicing are incorrect. As a consequence, some of the policy directions currently being explored in the negotiations on this topic among Member States are allegedly harmful for jobs and growth in Europe.

Read about the proposed compromise in their Open Letter:
http://www.epractitionersvoice.eu/assets/Position_Practitioners_FINAL.pdf

Anyone wishing to join the list of supporters can send a mail to einvoicing.practitioners@gmail.com

As public authorities, the Commission and other EU administrations purchase goods and services. For this, the institutions follow procurement procedures, which lead to the conclusion of public contracts. Public contracts represent a part of the Community’s expenditure and cover several areas such as obtaining and fitting out offices for Commission departments, purchasing IT equipment, commissioning consultancy work or technical assistance.

Until now, most of the exchanges between the Commission and its suppliers have been made on paper. Invoices, as a case in point, are all sent by post mail. This is costly for the environment and handling all these documents throughout the procurement cycle takes considerable time, thus generating administrative delays.

IDABC Programme
DIGIT and DG MARKT joined forces in 2007 and, thanks to a funding of the IDABC Programme (Programme for the Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens), they started an eProcurement project in collaboration with several Member States and Standardisation Bodies. Thanks to this project, the procurement process will be made electronically, thanks to a secure interface recognised by all parties.

Once a product has been delivered or a service has been provided, the Commission receives an invoice from its supplier. The first electronic invoice has now been sent to the Commission via an integrated interface using web services made accessible to the supplier. This was made possible thanks to the IT tools ‘e-Invoicing’ and ‘e-PRIOR’ designed for this purpose: e-Invoicing is one of the modules of the eProcurement suite and has gone live on 1 October 2009, following the approval of the system by the data centre in DIGIT, the product acceptance by the system owner, unit R.2 of DIGIT, and the ex-ante agreement by the Commission’s Accounting Officer.

Thanks to this system, the supplier is able to send a secured invoice and other attached documents in XML format via the Internet. The invoice is received by the e-PRIOR platform, which can then deliver the invoice to ’SYSLOG Invoice’, the local invoice management system used by DIGIT’s Unit R.2. Financial agents are able to see the invoice as any other paper invoice that would have been scanned, and can ensure the payment far more quickly. Exchanging invoices via a web interface saves paper and helps protect the environment. Since it is no longer necessary to scan the invoices and to create the invoice records manually in SYSLOG Invoice, it also lessens the number of human interactions, and therefore reduces payment delays.

Future
In the future, the eProcurement team will organise a roll-out in order first to broaden the production to more suppliers, and then to expand it to further clients within the Commission services. When other units in the Commission will use e-Invoicing, they can either use SYSLOG Invoice as a tool to manage invoices once received, or an interface will be developed between e-Invoicing and their own existing tool. The e-Invoicing module will also be interconnected with the other modules of the e-Procurement suite.

Furthermore, the e-Procurement model will be made available to be used by other administrations, and could also be applied to other areas where there is a need for sharing electronically secured and structured documents with third parties.

Environment
Regarding the environmental aspect of the projects, a study has been made by an external company showing that Belgium can save more than 15 000 tons paper and reduce its CO2 emission by 360 000 millions tons by using e-Invoicing instead of printed invoices. This calculation takes as average 900 millions invoices printed by year and a use of 50 % recycled paper.

Source: www.epractice.eu

The ECRN project is striving to become the European Service Platform for the Civil Registry with the establishment of an ECR_Platform among the Civil Acts Registries of National Administrations. It is implementing an ambitious policy of strategic cooperation with key players of the Civil Registry in Europe with the set-up of an experimental system designed to ensure the safe and certain identification of the Civil Acts (birth, death, marriage, divorce etc.) exchange. Together with the cooperation in the public arena, ECRN is active in cooperation with European market technology leaders of the Civil registry and Demographic Services in Europe.

At the moment the Civil Registry sector is undergoing in Europe a tremendous change process mainly due to the increasing number of expatriate in each Member State, and consequently a growing of demand of trans-national certifications. The ECRN initiative intends to reply strategically to this trend with an outstanding governance of the process i) aiming at strengthening the administrations’ ability to use new technologies, ii) increasing  the efficiency and effectiveness of the local administrative action in the European context while reducing costs, iii) improving the administration-citizen relationship by shortening the procedures for citizens’ civil status in 2-3 days and enabling citizens to reply in costs due time to request for documentation or certificates.

In the beginning of 2010, all the ECRN project consortium’s competences and skills are mobilised and running in order to fully achieve the ambitious project objectives; at the moment the technology platform is under intensive testing and the key functionalities are robust and are replying well to the severe pressure of the tests. The Administrations involved in the project (Italian Association of Civil registry officials, Municipality of Rotterdam, City Council Gent, Municipality of Bologna, Slovenian Ministry of Interior, Romanian Ministry of Communication and Information technology), are already using the platform functions for requesting, signing, sending, controlling, receiving and acknowledging receipt of Civil Registry documents.

To highlight, the ECRN Consortium is continuing to develop strong links with new potential customers and partners for its services, is continuing in the dissemination and advertisement of ECRN services, inviting new Administrations to enter in ECR Platform and to test its services, In addition, ECRN is dialoguing with other EC large projects to extend the cooperation and to build a large infrastructure of interoperable platforms, in order to exchange services together in a safe, secure, efficient and reliable way. For the upcoming months, the strategic cooperation to promote ECR Platform will be intensified, with the involvement of additional countries and players, both from the institutional and market sectors. They will pave the way for high value market services in the strategic sector of the Administrations in the whole Europe.

If you are interested, please subscribe on-line in http://www.ecrn.eu
The movie about the ECRN services http://www.ecrn.eu/site_movie.exe
Antonio D’Amico, ECRN, Rome (antonio.damico@ecrn.eu)

The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) in Brussels has launched an e-Procurement framework to connect public organizations and private companies in the European Community. This will lead to increased e-commerce within the European Union and lower costs.

The new CEN Workshop Agreement on ‘Business Interoperability Interfaces’ (BII), was published today. It streamlines the processes in the supplier exchange and will have a huge impact on procurement in Europe.
e-Business and e-Procurement are high on the political agenda of the European Union. The European Commission made the development of an e-Procurement framework a top priority in both the 2002 and the 2005 eEurope Action Plans.

The Manchester Declaration states that by 2010 all public institutions must have the capability to carry out 100 % of their procurement electronically. “The support of the European Commission and European governments makes this the right time to invest in e-Procurement”, said Peter Borresen, chairman of the CEN Workshop.

This integration requires precisely defined interfaces on both sides. Besides the technical requirements, the semantics and the business part of the transaction have to be agreed upon. In this context, different jurisdiction regions, which might constitute an obstacle when moving towards a free and open European Market, have to be considered as well. Adding to the challenge are different interpretations of the EU Directive concerning electronic business. All of this calls for a clear definition and understanding of the business rules for e-Procurement.

The new e-Procurement framework supports cross border transactions, a very important asset of the European Union. Trading transactions within the community form the major share of all import and export transactions in all the member states. It is therefore important that those trading transactions are supported by cross border integration of the IT systems used by the partners involved.

Background information
A CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) is developed by a Workshop and reflects the consensus of identified individuals and organizations that are responsible for its contents. The CEN Workshop on Business Interoperability Interfaces (BII) started in 2007 as an initiative by a number of European countries within the CEN system. The objective was to prepare a next generation e-Procurement framework accepted across Europe. After 14 meetings and thousands of man-hours, this has now been achieved and the results are available free of charge.

The BII framework is available at the CEN web site at:
http://www.cen.eu/CENORM/Sectors/Sectors/ISSS/Activity/Ws_BII.asp

For more information, please contact Jostein Frömyr ( Jostein.fromyr@edisys.no ).

This CWA reflects the most recent technical and legal developments in Europe. They are ready for implementation as from today and have already been implemented in some European projects, such as PEPPOL (Pan-European Public eProcurement On-Line) and the e-invoicing project of the European Commission.

CEN/BII has agreed on business rules taking into account the differences that exist in the countries that are doing trade within the EU. The result provides a common interpretation of the EU Directive that is now ready to be used by the business partners and their system providers.

To secure appropriate governance and sustainability for the work initiated, the work of the BII workshop will move to its next phase. For more information, see: http://www.cen.eu/CENORM/Sectors/Sectors/ISSS/Activity/Ws_BII.asp

The CEN Workshop Agreement on “Cyber-Identity – Unique Identification Systems For Organizations and Parts Thereof”, called CWA 16036:2009 was released in November 2009. It can be summarized as follows: Unique identifiers of organizations point to information related to the organization.

Unique identifiers are provided by registration authorities like official Commercial Registries, GS1, D&B or others which in turn are qualified by meta-identifiers. Applying and verifying such identified information opens up a new range of applications in areas like eInvoicing  and eCommerce in general, supply chain management, conformity assessment or using such logical identifiers as a reliable routing and addressing scheme.

This CWA 16036 has already had an impact on the eBusiness community. The Expert Group on eInvoicing mandated by the European Commission has released its final report. The report analyzes the situation of eInvoicing in Europe and makes recommendation for improvement.

The according guidance recommendations for development of a fully interoperable environment recommend the use of existing business identifiers for addressing and routing and those solutions shall be implemented based upon CWA 16036 (section 5.5.5 of the report).

The CWA 16036 can be downloaded from the CEN FTP-server at
ftp://cenftp1.cenorm.be/PUBLIC/CWAs/Cyber_Identity/CWA_CyberIdentity.pdf (83 pages).

A short summary of CWA 16036 can be downloaded at
http://www.cyber-identity.com/documents#CWA16036 (7 pages).

The Final Report of the Expert Group on eInvoicing can be downloaded at
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/ict/files/finalreport_en.pdf

The major objective of the Work Shop is to provide support for a continuing technical platform, compared to the EEI Platform which focuses on awareness and adoption of e-invoicing.

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Mission

The mission of what is called the technical “CEN e-invoice Platform” is to:

-          be open to the participation of any interested party;

-          be neutral and be without commercial purposes

-          reach stakeholder consensus on standards-related issues;

-          provide the appropriate interface with international and other European standards activities

Target deliverables

The overall target of Phase 3 will be “Integration of efforts in standardisation and developments” in the following technical areas

-          Standards
E-invoicing modules for business software, methodology of software tools, functionalities and specifications for business software requirements.

-          Compliance
Improvement of cooperation between companies and tax authorities, establishment of clear common understanding between companies and tax authorities in EU, accessibility of rules and regulation.

-          Implementation
Best practice implementations with model agreements for electronic invoicing, model processes and SME focussed best practices.

-          Business Process
Integration of electronic invoice in existing business processes.

Please read the publication about the report.
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Help us help the European Commission and the EU E-invoicing Expertgoup and take our online survey.
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All input is:

-          anonymous (unless you wish otherwise of course)
-          publicly available
-          collected up to February 26th, 2010

(it will take you about 5 minutes)

Thank you.

The EEI Platform

The software is aimed at public administrations that wish to try out electronic procurement, including cross-border procurement.

The software is meant to bridge the legacy systems used by public administrations and the systems of their suppliers. João Rodrigues Frade, one of the IT architects involved with e-Prior, explains that “Public authorities can use Open e-Prior to manage their procurement processes electronically. They can use it to receive catalogues digitally, they can submit their orders on-line and they can manage their invoices this way, simply by exchanging electronic business documents.”

The system is built respecting specifications meant to facilitate public procurement, and that focus on cross-border interoperability, specifications eleborated by a workshop on Business Interoperability Interfaces for Public procurement in Europe (CEN BII).

Open e-PRIOR should also make it easy to connect to the Pan-European Public eProcurement On-Line project (Peppol), since it will come with a built-in Peppol gateway.

However, this Peppol gateway is not included on the version that was published on the OSOR Forge earlier this month, says Frade. “What we made available is a sneak-preview for the European Member States.”

He hopes that many public administrations will try out the e-Prior tool. “I hope they will join the OSOR Forge, so they can take part in the development.”

e-Prior is published using the European Union Public Licence (EUPL).

The DIGIT initiative supports the objectives of the i2010 e-Government Action Plan, aimed to accelerate adoption of e-Procurement in Europe.

Source: www.osor.eu

The ETSI standard supports a European Commission Action Plan that seeks to build on existing experience in this area and further improve the efficiency of cross-border use of electronic signatures. Open technical standards, such as those produced by ETSI, provide an ideal means for ensuring the required interoperability such that, for example, a document created and signed in one Member State can be validated in another.

The standard also recognizes that digitally-signed documents may be used or archived for many years – even many decades. At any time in the future, in spite of technological and other advances, it must be possible to validate the document to confirm that the signature was valid at the time it was signed – a concept known as Long-Term Validation (LTV).

Development
The new standard was developed by ETSI’s Electronic Signatures and Infrastructure (ESI) Technical Committee in collaboration with PDF experts. PDF is defined in a standard (ISO 32000-1) published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), so the ETSI activity included reviewing and documenting how ISO 32000-1 can satisfy the European Directive. The resulting PAdES standard, ETSI Technical Specification (TS) 102 778, also introduces a number of adaptations and extensions to PDF to satisfy the Directive’s requirements. ETSI will feed these European-specific elements back into ISO for inclusion in the next release of the PDF standard, ISO 32000-2.

PAdES is complementary to two other Electronic Signature concepts also developed by ETSI’s ESI committee, both widely recognised within the European Union and suited for applications that do not involve human-readable documents: Cryptographic Message Syntax Advanced Electronic Signatures (CAdES) and XML Advanced Electronic Signatures (XAdES).

As with all ETSI standards, the PAdES, CAdES and XAdES standards can be downloaded free of charge from the ETSI website at http://pda.etsi.org/pda/.

PDF and PAdES – major enablers for electronic commerce
PDF provides an electronic analogue to paper documents and also allows richer digital content to be stored and presented to the user. The transition from paper to PDF is eased by PDF’s ability to electronically represent nearly any form of paper document and by its support for electronic signatures which are today’s equivalent of yesterday’s ink signatures.

An electronic signature is a paperless way to sign a document using a unique credential associated with a given person that is logically attached to or associated with the document, carrying an authority equivalent to a handwritten signature. It can be used to authenticate the signer as well as to detect any changes in the document made after it was signed. Electronic signatures are recognized as a catalyst to electronic commerce, notably Internet transactions. Availability of electronic signature techniques has already been a major stimulus to eBusiness and eGovernment.

For PDF documents, the signature data is incorporated directly within the signed PDF document, much as an ink signature becomes an integral part of a paper document, allowing the complete self-contained PDF file to be copied, stored and distributed as a simple electronic file. The signature can also have a visual representation as a form field, just as it might on a paper document. A significant advantage of PAdES is that it is being deployed by means of widely available PDF software: it does not require development or customization of specialized software.

www.etsi.org

The European Expert group on E-invoicing published its final version of its report. The Expertgroup had been mandated to design a European e-Invoicing framework, contributing to the uptake of open and interoperable e-invoicing solutions within the European Union (EU). The report does not represent the views of the Commission nor the views of –some- individual Expert group members.

The EEI Platform supports the European Commission and the EU E-invoicing Expert group by this online survey that you can fill out after reading the report.

Report

The report together with information on the consultation is available at: http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/consultations/2009/e-invoicing_en.htm

The Framework = Recommendations

The proposed framework is presented as a set of coherent recommendations designed to promote the uptake of e-invoicing and which requires a response by identified stakeholders.

The EEIF sets out a vision for the future European e-invoicing environment and presents a target picture as an objective for all stakeholders:

-          Within five to eight years structured e-invoicing will become the predominant invoicing method throughout Europe. All sectors and market segments will be fully engaged.

-          The legal and tax environment for the conduct of e-invoicing will have been harmonized across all Member States and trading parties will have access to clear, easy-to-use and unambiguous guidance as to achieving compliance. Electronic invoices will be treated on an equal basis with traditional paper-based invoices.

-          Trading parties will have a wide choice of solutions and services to support einvoicing, which may be conducted on a bilateral basis directly between counterparties, or through service providers of various kinds. Trading parties will be able to conduct structured e-invoicing in a highly convenient and secure manner.

-          Standards for invoicing and related processes will have been widely adopted; in particular the UN/CEFACT Cross-Industry Invoice (CII) v.2 will have been implemented by the majority of trading parties. Other standards and formats will remain in use and appropriate facilities for format conversion will be readily accessible.

-          European enterprises will have made further substantial investments in cost efficient procurement, payments and accounting processes and the supporting ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems and services. Such processes will require minimal manual intervention, and. ERP systems will be fully capable of generating einvoices both for direct transmission between trading parties and for service provider processing.

-          End-users and SMEs in particular will be using low-cost and user-friendly solutions and services that can be easily accessed and integrated with internal systems as well as being interoperable with external systems. The absence of IT skills and resources will not act as a roadblock to e-invoicing adoption. Users will be able to reuse investments and business habits to the maximum degree possible.

-          E-invoicing will have acted as a spur to the dematerialization and digitalization of other usiness documents and processes and to the reduction of administrative burdens on businesses. The ecosystem will be open and capable of maximum flexibility and evolution supporting both European enterprises and linkages to global supply chains. The report gives guidance for the implementation of the recommendations at Member State and EU level.

Further information:

Report of the Expert Group on e-Invoicing and information on the consultation
EU Single Market thematic website on Europa – E-Invoicing page
European Commission Directorate-General for Entreprise and Industry – E-Invoicing page

The first version of the EIF, published in 2004, gave definitions of open standards and recommended the use of open source software. In the new version of the EIF these references have been omitted. Now the document has a section on openness, writing that “interoperability can also be obtained without openness, for example via homogeneity of the ICT systems, which implies that all partners use, or agree to use, the same solution to implement a European Public Service.”

“The EIF is in danger”, says Karsten Gerloff, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). “This new draft is a threat to the interoperability of European eGovernment services, and a recipe to maintain and even increase vendor lock-in.”

In a letter sent on 6 November 2009, Gerloff urges the EU member states to make the European Commission withdraw the revision.

On the same day, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) published ten suggestions to improve the draft. It argues for instance for a strong definition of open standards, to prevent patents from making standards incompatible with open source licences such as for instance the European Union Public Licence (EUPL).

According to OpenForum Europe the EU has abandoned its commitment to open standards. In a statement, Graham Taylor, CEO of OpenForum Europe on Monday said: “The drastic changes from the consultation document of 2008 to this document cannot be seen as resulting from the comments submitted through the public consultation, forcing us to conclude either that the Commission has been unduly influenced by pressures outside of the democratic and transparent process or that it is desperate to defend its own legacy procurement choices”.

According to the private IT news site, the draft was published by the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs in late October 2009. It quoted a spokesperson for the European Commission who last week denied the document was official. However, a Dutch IT news site, a day earlier had already quoted Serge Novaretti, EIF project officer at IDABC, the European Commission’s unit for eGovernment policies, confirming the document. According to Novaretti, the message is still the same, it is just written in another way.

Update
The OSOR earlier reported the EU was to present its new EIF document on 12 November 2009 in Malmö, Sweden. That is not the case, says Karel De Vriendt, Head of the IDABC unit responsible for the OSOR project and the EIF draft. “We have sent a draft to the member states and asked for their comments. It is a draft and as such subject to change before being finalised.”

Source: www.epractice.eu

“The EC Expert Group on e-Invoicing has approved its final report. It will be published in within the next weeks. The work has involved a total of close to 60 experts over nearly two years and has already had a significant effect on the activities both in the market uptake, in the standardization  area and in the regulatory simplification and unification efforts by the EC and Member States.”

The readers will see that the report is recommending rapid actions by all parties involved based on the fundamental principles of technology neutrality, substance over form and furthering of competition. The focus has from the beginning been on next-to-eliminating the thresholds for SMEs to move into digitalized business communicating – increasingly demanded by their trading partners and the public sectors.

A very important step in this direction would be EU-wide implementation of the equal treatment principles (no additional demand on electronic invoices – in relation to less secure paper/fax/PDF invoices) in the new VAT-directive. WIthout this it will be more costly and much slower to move into a single market – and if for example digital signatures would stay mandatory – virtually impossible for law-abiding enterprises to exchange e-invoices bilaterally without use of service providers.

A rapid migration away from inputting information into unstructured form is needed. Also the wasteful practises of de-digitizing invoice information with print or pdf and then re-digitizing scant information left must end fast.

Both actions needed for direct productivity improvements and above all to rise to a new paradigm in all aspects of business administration. This will enable in practise totally automated accounting, reporting and VAT-payments in real time and producing new dimension of value for both customers and public authorities. We call it a Centurial Reform. Demontrating the huge benefits to SMEs should take away the last resistance to changing old habits – especially as it can be done without investments and IT-skills.

The new paradigm presents a real opportunity for EU to both improve productivity with much more than the impact of 25% cut in administrative costs by 2012 set as a goal by DG Enterprise (as such not realistic without mass digitalization) and also to continue to lead global standardization and rollouts in this fundamental area.”

Source: blog Bo Harald

The EC is calling on member states and businesses to stop stalling and put more services into the cloud, to help better engage with the public and improve sustainability.

The technology now exists to enable governments across Europe to seize on the potential of cloud computing and develop online public services that better meet the needs of their populations, but not enough countries are taking decisive action on the issue, according to the European Commission.

In a speech this week, at the ‘Visby Agenda: Creating impact for an eUnion 2015′ conference in Sweden, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding outlined the importance of cloud computing in tackling issues such as social engagement and improving the sustainability of government IT.

Reding said that Europe’s 23 million SMEs had been slow to “jump on the ICT train” and only 9 percent of small companies use electronic invoices. She also highlighted that only 11 percent have technology-based Human Resources management systems.

“I see, therefore, great potential for cloud computing applications to help Europe’s businesses into the true ICT age, at lower costs compared to traditional IT company solutions,” said Reding. “Accessing computing power over the web instead of investing in technologies and applications would not only be cheaper, but also easier for businesses that then don’t have to buy and maintain technologies and IT applications and services.”

But according to Reding, it is not only up to business to grasp the potential of cloud computing. “This is not only an area where businesses should act, this is in particular an area where I call upon Europe’s public administrations to take the lead to deliver what citizens need today – the ‘Gov 2.0′ experience. Europe’s public services cannot escape any longer collaboration with their users! In the future, eGovernment will have to move from a ‘one size fits all’ to ‘tailor-made customised services’.”

Reding added that cloud computing would allow public services to be more inclusive and personalised. “Thanks to cloud computing, public services will have the chance to be provided anywhere, anytime and anyhow and to anybody. This means that public services will become inclusive, personalised and more user-driven than ever,” she said.

In a wide ranging speech that also touched on the importance of creating a single digital market in Europe to ease issues such as buying items online across European borders, Reding also focused on the importance of IT in meeting environmental goals laid down in the upcoming Copenhagen talks.

“Just consider the following: If businesses in Europe were to replace only 20 percent of all business trips by video conferencing, we could save more than 22 million tons of CO2 per year. And cloud computing could lead to electricity savings in computing activity of up to 80 percent,” she said.

As well as discussing the potential of IT to help Europe meet its energy efficiency targets, Reding also called on the IT industry to improve its own energy efficiency amid rising demand for ever more sophisticated technology.

“First and foremost, the ICT sector should make a collective effort to reduce its own footprint which is currently set to double by 2020 due to the increasing use of ICT,” she said. “The Recommendation therefore invites the sector to adopt, for the first time by 2010, a common measurement framework to quantify its own energy and carbon footprint, leading to energy efficiency targets that should exceed the EU 2020 targets already in 2015.”

But despite the importance of IT to meet tighter carbon targets, experts this week criticised the lack of focus on IT at the UN Copenhagen talks in December.

Source: www.eweekeurope.co.uk

In total, the measures proposed by the Commission and under preparation would enable businesses to save around € 40.4 bn from € 123.8 bn on red-tape stemming from 72 EU texts and the measures that transpose and implement them in the Member States. Reduction measures put in place by the Commission or proposed by the Commission and already adopted could bring a reduction of EUR 7.6 billion.

Measures proposed by the Commission and pending adoption by the European Parliament and the Council would add EUR 30.7 billion to that amount. Preparatory work on further reduction could lead to the presentation of additional measures bringing further reduction of at least EUR 2.1 billion. Now it is in the hands of the co legislators to ensure that businesses can feel the difference on the ground.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said: “The Commission is fully on track to deliver on its goals to reduce red tape for businesses.   B usinesses are already set to save €7.6 billion a year. That will become about €40 billion if Member States and the European Parliament back our proposals in full. But better regulation is a job that never ends. It is not just about changing bad rules, but making good rules work better, using new technologies and new innovation. Further streamlining European and national regulation – without compromising on protecting the public – will be a key to the next Commission’s drive to promote sustainable economic recovery.”

Vice-President Günter Verheugen, Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry, said: “Today’s package is the result of policy commitment and hard work to abolish unnecessary bureaucracy. The Commission has done everything in its power to achieve the 25% target by 2012. I invite the European Parliament and Member States to adopt all of our remaining proposals to make them fully effective for the European economy as soon as possible. It does not cost anything but would mean a boost of around 30.7 bn € for our enterprises, and especially for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs).”

The EU administrative burden reduction programme will deliver an overall reduction of 40.4 bn € (33% of the estimated burden). It would come into effect, if all Commission proposals find the agreement of the Council and the Parliament. This is particularly the case for two major proposals, made at the beginning of this year, one in the field of VAT aimed at facilitating e-invoicing (worth € 18 bn), the other in the field of company law, exempting micro-entities from accounting obligations (worth € 7 bn).

The baseline measurement exercise has been completed and confirmed the choice made by the Commission to concentrate on the selected priority areas. This measurement exercise has also confirmed the vulnerability of SMEs to administrative burdens. Stakeholders’ involvement and the High Level Group, chaired by E. Stoiber were instrumental in evaluating the feasibility and in the identifying further reductions measures, which may be part of new initiatives for reducing administrative burdens during the next Commission.

Moreover, all Member States have now set ambitious national targets, as agreed in 2007.

The Commission will continue to ensure through its impact assessment system that requirements introduced by new policies are kept to the minimum.

The “Action Programme for Reducing Administrative Burdens in the EU” is an essential part of the Commission’s overall Better Regulation Agenda. The aim of this policy is to promote competitiveness, growth and jobs. Reducing regulatory costs imposed on enterprises is also in keeping with the Small Business Act and its “think small first” principle and is one of the key areas for action in the European Economic Recovery Plan.

Today’s announcement confirms that the reduction of administrative burden is a continuous exercise in view of achieving a real impact in every sector on the ground.

CEN – European Committee for Standardization

At the last eInv2 WS plenary in September, it was decided to organize a meeting on 27 November 2009 in order to prepare the eInvoicing phase 3 project (this was confirmed in October).

The meeting will take place from 10:00 to 16:30, in the CEN/CENELEC Meeting Centre in Brussels:

Address:
Room Newton A
Avenue Marnix, 17
B-1000 Brussels

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Agenda

1.      Welcome, agenda

2.      Meeting minutes

3.      Phase II
3.1.   Status CWA per task group
3.2.   Tasks identified for Phase 3 out of Phase 2
3.3.   Revision of CWA 15575

4.      Phase III
4.1.   Approval status of application on Phase 3
4.2.   Proposals from the Expert Group
4.3.   Status of revised Directive 112/2006
4.4.   Scoping discussion on Phase 3
4.5.   Alliances/Liaisons required for phase 3

5.      Requirements for secretarial support and project management

6.      AOB
6.1.   Presentations on Phase 2
6.2.   Next meeting