EESPA undertakes research and makes recommendations through its Public Policy and Compliance Working Group, which is open to all members on a voluntary basis. It engages with stakeholder forums and EU decision-makers in relation to public policy areas and compliance issues to promote good practice and optimal solutions.
Compliance is defined as those activities undertaken by service providers and their clients to ensure compliance with laws and regulations impacting invoicing and related processes.
EESPA Summary of Policy Positions
An EESPA Summary of Policy Positions, is regularly published and widely distributed; the following is the latest set of core positions:
- Adoption: EESPA supports concerted action by all European stakeholders to promote the benefits and ease of adoption of e-invoicing and e-procurement for both the public and private sector. Mandates and incentives should be carefully considered to promote significantly higher rates of adoption of digital processes. The COVID-19 pandemic creates conditions for the concerted implementation of digitalization.
- Fiscal Policy Changes: the environment for electronic invoicing in a number of European Union (EU) Member States is impacted by the growing adoption of ‘continuous transaction controls’ (CTC) or ‘transaction-based reporting’ (TBR) through legislation. It is critical that these innovations and associated standardization consider the need to simultaneously promote a more interoperable digital marketplace via the adoption of decentralized invoice exchange approaches based on the ‘five-corner model’.
- Standards: The EU core invoice standard (EN) is an important initiative but needs a strong focus on implementation and interoperability to ensure its success. Interoperability at the transmission level is an important complement to the EN and beyond that to the wider adoption of e-invoicing; the European Commission’s e-Delivery building block provides a valuable basis for four-corner and five-corner data exchange. EESPA is an active participant in the working group that has created the Global Interoperability Framework (GIF) and recommends its widespread adoption.
- Solutions: Policies related to the implementation of e-procurement and e-invoicing should be solution-neutral and recognise the trend towards enterprise software becoming more specialised and ‘cloud’ based service models becoming more prevalent for the management of business processes and data interchange. Policy-makers should adopt policies, which create a level playing field for the various available service and solution models irrespective of technical or functional approach, or geographic location within the digital single market.
PPCWG's work streams
Within the PPCWG, work is currently focused on two main work-streams supported by work on other topics as they arise:
- Compliance: Improving the EESPA definitions and Responsibility Matrix. Developing guidance to members for the management of compliance when inter-operating with other service providers in a four-corner model.
- Continuous Transaction Controls (CTCs); monitoring and providing guidance to members on CTC developments in Europe and world-wide. Making recommendations for greater harmonization based on clear principles and good practices.
MEETINGS
The PPCWG reports on its activities at teh GEneral assemblies in May and Nov and holds monthly virtual meetings on the 4th Tuesday of each month in 2023. Members interested in the topic are asked to join the Working group and register for each of the meetings.