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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.

Core Invoice Extension

EN 16931 conformance mechanism for adding new business content beyond the European core.

Definition

A Core Invoice Extension adds business terms or groups that the EN 16931 core does not provide, for a sector or process that needs more data. Where a CIUS may only narrow the core (forbidding, narrowing cardinalities, fixing values), an extension introduces additional content. A compliant instance must still satisfy all core rules.

Origin

Defined in EN 16931-1 (CEN/TC 434), which sets the conformance framework distinguishing CIUS from extensions for the European semantic standard on electronic invoicing.

Example in context

The German XRechnung and the construction-sector extensions layer additional groups on top of EN 16931 while keeping every core business rule (e.g. BR-1, BR-CO-10) satisfied.

  • CIUS — the restrictive counterpart of an extension.
  • EN 16931 — the core semantic model both build on.

Last updated: June 20, 2026