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Spotlight PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 The EU e-invoicing mandate is here — France Sept 2026, Belgium Jan 2026, Germany 2025.

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Foundations

— 02

Standards

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Flagship messages

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Tools

NemHandel — the Danish national platform since 2005

On 1 February 2005, Denmark became the first country in the world to make electronic invoicing mandatory for all public administrations — State, regions and municipalities alike — via the NemHandel platform operated by Erhvervsstyrelsen (ERST). This mandate predates the 2014/55/EU directive by fifteen years and inspired the vast majority of subsequent European models.

Genesis — the first universal B2G mandate worldwide

The origin of the Danish mandate dates back to work by the Ministry of Finance (Finansministeriet) in the early 2000s on the digitisation of the State. Several findings converged:

  • The Danish public sector annually received ~15 million paper invoices around 2000, at an average administrative cost of 90 DKK per unit.
  • The "eDay 2" project (launched on 1 February 2005, hence the date) aimed at the total elimination of paper in exchanges with the State.
  • Denmark already had a unified business identifier infrastructure (CVR since 1990) and a central registry of citizens' bank accounts (NemKonto since 2003).

The political decision to make the mandate universal — with no threshold, no sectoral exception, no differentiated schedule — radically distinguished Denmark from later models (France PPF with SME/large enterprise schedule, Italy SdI with forfettario micro-regime exemption, Spain Verifactu with B2C exclusion).

The ministerial order Bekendtgørelse nr. 354 af 26. maj 2005 om elektronisk afregning med offentlige myndigheder finds its legal basis in Lov om offentlige betalinger (Public Payments Act, lov nr. 1203 of 27 December 2003), which authorises the Minister of Finance to mandate a specific transmission format for State/private financial flows.

The text was published in Lovtidende (Danish Official Journal) on 27 May 2005, with retroactive entry into force on 1 February 2005 to align with eDay 2.

text bekendtgoerelse-354-2005-extract.txt 
Bekendtgørelse nr. 354 af 26. maj 2005 om elektronisk afregning
med offentlige myndigheder

§ 1. Fakturaer, kreditnotaer og rykkere, der sendes til offentlige
myndigheder, skal fra 1. februar 2005 fremsendes elektronisk.

§ 2. Den elektroniske faktura skal være struktureret i overensstemmelse
med OIOXML-formatet, godkendt af IT- og Telestyrelsen.

§ 3. Fakturaen skal indeholde EAN-lokationsnummeret (GLN) på den
modtagende myndighed, jf. bilag 1.

§ 4. Erhvervsstyrelsen kan i særlige tilfælde fritage for kravet,
hvis væsentlige hensyn taler herfor.

—— English working translation ——

Statutory Order No. 354 of 26 May 2005 on electronic settlement
with public authorities

§ 1. Invoices, credit notes and reminders sent to public authorities
shall, from 1 February 2005, be transmitted electronically.

§ 2. The electronic invoice shall be structured in accordance with
the OIOXML format, as approved by the Danish IT and Telecom Agency.

§ 3. The invoice shall contain the EAN location number (GLN) of the
receiving authority, in accordance with annex 1.

NemHandel architecture — LMS, RASP, AS2 then AS4

NemHandel originally rested on three building blocks:

  • LMS (Local Message Storage) — local warehouse on sender and receiver sides for pending OIOXML/OIOUBL messages.
  • RASP (Reliable Asynchronous Secure Profile) — SOAP transport protocol with WS-ReliableMessaging and WS-Security, signed with X.509 OCES (Danish public certificates).
  • NHR (NemHandel Register) — central directory of access points and reception capabilities (coupled to EAN/CVR).

From 2018 onwards, the architecture migrated to the PEPPOL 4-corner model with AS2 (Drummond AS2 conformance) then AS4 (CEF eDelivery), while preserving RASP backward compatibility for legacy partners.

From OIOXML format to OIOUBL profile

OIOXML — initially developed by Statens IT in 2003 — was replaced in 2008 by OIOUBL (Offentlig Information Online UBL), a Danish CIUS on UBL 2.0 (then 2.1 in 2010). OIOUBL preserves OIOXML semantics while complying with OASIS UBL schemas, facilitating international interoperability.

Main Danish specificities added on top of UBL:

  • OIOUBL Invoice profile with BR-DK-* rules (~80 additional Schematron rules).
  • Country/currency/VAT codes following Danish codelists (Skatteforvaltningen).
  • CVR identifier mandatory in Party/EndpointID with scheme ID 0184 (Danish Business Authority — historical GLN 0088 retained for legacy flows).
  • Extended PaymentMeans section for FIK 71/73/04/15 (historical Danish bank payment codes).

ICD 0096 — the Denmark identifier in PEPPOL

In the PEPPOL directory (Service Metadata Publisher — SMP), Danish companies declare themselves with an 8-digit CVR identifier under the scheme 0184 (Danish Ministry of Business — historically corresponding to the former ICD 0096). The CVR is mandatory for any organisation registered with the Danish business register.

xml cvr-peppol-endpoint.xml 
<cbc:EndpointID schemeID="0184">12345678</cbc:EndpointID>
<cac:PartyIdentification>
  <cbc:ID schemeID="0184">12345678</cbc:ID>
</cac:PartyIdentification>

Volume and adoption

In 2024, NemHandel processed annually (ERST figures):

  • ~20 million B2G invoices (entering State/Regions/Municipalities IT systems).
  • ~3,000 receiving public entities (5 regions, 98 kommuner, ~2,900 agencies/medical centres/schools).
  • ~250,000 issuing companies registered with the NemHandel register.
  • 99.6% OIOUBL/PEPPOL compliance rate — residual paper limited to occasional foreign suppliers.
  • ~250M DKK/year in savings estimated by Erhvervsstyrelsen vs paper invoicing (2023 report).

PEPPOL transition (2018 → 2026)

Since 2018, Denmark has officially accepted PEPPOL-BIS Billing 3.0 alongside OIOUBL for B2G invoicing. This duality results from the Danish commitment within the OpenPEPPOL Authority (based in The Hague) and the need to align European cross-border flows.

Provisional schedule:

  • 2024-2025: OIOUBL 3.0 / PEPPOL-BIS 3.0 coexistence, OIOUBL still recommended for internal B2G.
  • 2026: OIOUBL 3.0 mandate for new B2G integrations, PEPPOL recommended for cross-border.
  • 2028 (estimated): ViDA convergence — alignment with future European e-reporting.