Brussels, 27/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - Savings of €2.3 billion is what the European Commission is hoping to achieve from its new draft directive on e-invoices for public procurement, presented on Wednesday 26 June by Commissioner Michel Barnier. The Commission also published a communication setting out its vision for the full digitisation of the public procurement process, the so-called” end-to-end e-procurement”. This is the final stage in the process and could help the EU make savings of up to €80 billion a year, explained the Commissioner.
In the meantime, the current draft directive is aimed at putting a stop to an extremely disjointed system across the 28 member states where 500 different kinds of e-invoices exist and which are not even inter -operable, explained the commissioner, adding: “Switching from paper to fully automated invoicing can cut the costs of receiving an invoice from €30-50 to €1”.
In practice, the directive proposed on Wednesday proposes a European e-invoicing standard to improve interoperability between different, mainly national, e-invoicing systems. This very technical work will be carried out for the next four years by the European Standardisation Committee, which will be in charge of establishing a common standard. Companies and local authorities will, however, have the choice of deciding whether they want to use this common standard or not for e-invoicing but once they do accept it, the two contracting parties will be committed. The European mechanism should not replace the e-invoicing systems already in place in local government in certain member states. Nonetheless, the directive does seek to “eliminate legal uncertainty, excessive complexity, and additional operating costs for economic operators who currently have to use different electronic invoices across the member states”, explained the Commission. It will also help boost the uptake of e-invoicing in Europe, which remains very low, accounting for only 4-15% of all invoices exchanged. (SP/transl.fl)