Facing up to the eInvoicing and ViDA Regulatory Challenge

We have previously reported on preparing for ViDA and on the serious issue posed to our industry by a possible non-alignment of the proposed EU ViDA legislation with current automotive industry practices. We have therefore been working throughout this year with CEN Technical Committee 434 to ensure that automotive data requirements are taken into account in the development of the EU standard invoice EN16931 to make it suitable for ViDA and for B2B invoicing.

Up to now, to be officially involved in this work, we have been reliant on our national association in Germany (VDA) via their membership of the national standards organisation in Germany (DIN),

We therefore applied for Odette to become a Liaison Organisation to CEN TC434 to allow us to be officially involved in the work on EN16931 and to get the opportunity to collaborate more closely with the EU regulatory bodies. We are happy to report that our application has now been accepted, representing the European automotive industry.

As a Liaison Organisation, Odette is in a good position to press for critical industry requirements to be taken into account in the regulations, including getting EDIFACT accepted as a valid syntax for EU eInvoicing. And we are not alone! Other sectors such as Retail find themselves in the same situation with significant pre-existing investments in successful eInvoicing processes possibly at stake with the new ViDA regulations.

At a recent TC434 Plenary meeting, EU representatives highlighted the fruitful collaboration with the automotive industry within CEN technical committees and stressed the importance of our input to the regulatory process. They confirmed that they do not wish to impose additional unnecessary burdens on the industry and, together, we must find a way forward to allow the use of well-established solutions in the development of new taxation and reporting rules. Our interlocutors appear to be open to allowing EDIFACT invoice messages to be used provided they can meet the Digital Reporting Requirements (DRR).

It is clear that automotive industry companies will need to be able to receive invoices in UBL or CII format and support all ViDA requirements but it is essential that we are allowed to continue to send and receive EDIFACT invoices for our more sophisticated business processes.

Compromise seems to be possible and we will report again soon with more details on the practicalities of making EDIFACT compliant with the EU ViDA regulations.

In the meantime, the Odette eInvoicing Experts Group continues its work in identifying gaps between our current EDIFACT invoices and the EN16931 Core Invoice and preparing change requests for submission to CEN TC434.

Facing up to eInvoicing and ViDA Regulatory Challenge will be on the agenda at Odette2025 Conference in May in Bratislava.