France set to become a Peppol Authority

France /

December 16, 2024, 12:02 PM /

2 minutes

The future Peppol authority will govern PDP interoperability and ensure network readiness for France’s upcoming e-invoicing mandate.

The announcement took place during a plenary meeting of the FNFE (Forum National de la Facture Electronique), France’s primary e-invoicing association, attended by representatives from the DGFiP (French Ministry of Finance) and AIFE (Digital Finance Public Agency).

The news was later shared on LinkedIn by Cyrille Sautereau, President of the FNFE.

During this meeting, the DGFiP also announced that a formal French Norm (NF) will be developed in 2025 to clearly define the mandate’s framework. This includes outlining the interactions among all stakeholders involved in the system, such as PDPs, ODs, the PPF, and the Annuaire. For further details on all those participants, you can explore our France Country Profile.

It was additionally confirmed that a new version of the B2B e-invoicing and e-reporting mandate specifications, known as “Spécifications Externes,” will be released on December 18, 2024. This document is eagerly awaited, as the current version focuses on the central platform (PPF) specifications, which the DGFiP announced in October would have a reduced scope.

The expected role of the French Peppol Authority

The upcoming French mandate will primarily rely on Partner Dematerialization Platforms (PDPs) to ensure the accurate delivery of invoices between participants and the extraction of relevant tax data for submission to the tax authorities.

To meet DGFiP’s requirements, PDPs must be interoperable with one another, a goal unattainable through classic point-to-point connections. A decentralized network like the one based on the Peppol model is better suited to achieve this level of connectivity at scale and in the long term.

Moreover, PDPs will need to handle various additional document formats, including Factur-X invoices (based on PDF), CDAR status messages, and possibly EDIFACT invoices too, on top of supporting the already EN16931-compliant Peppol BIS format. There is also the challenge of aligning interactions with both the French directory of companies (“Annuaire”) and the Peppol e-Discovery components (SMPs and SML).

These tasks place essential responsibilities on the newly formed Peppol Authority, which is expected to provide clear guidelines to help PDPs develop compliant solutions for businesses subject to the mandate.

Official Timeline

The DGFiP has reiterated its commitment to the established deadlines:

September 1, 2026: Mandatory e-invoice reception for all companies and mandatory sending for large and medium-sized companies.
September 1, 2027: Full e-invoice compliance for all companies, with mandatory e-reporting.

In addition, multiple intermediary steps are scheduled, including:

December 18, 2024: Publication of the updated mandate specifications.
Q1 2025: Testing and rollout of the Annuaire functionalities.
2025 (no precision available yet): Official publication of the French Norm (NF).
Q4 2025: Audit and final certification of PDPs.
Q1 2026: Testing of e-reporting functionalities.

Stay tuned for our analysis of the updated specifications in the coming days!

Country Profile

France

Country regulation overview, resources, technical details, timeline, and more

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