Germany – Country Profile

National e-Invoicing Context

The State Treaty on IT establishing the IT Planning Council lays the groundwork for cooperation on the use of information technology in federal and state public administration (Article 91c of the Basic Law, State Treaty on IT). The IT Planning Council is the central body responsible for National IT cooperation. The amendment gave the Federal Government exclusive authority to pass legislation concerning a core network for federal and state public administration.

As part of the implementation of the Directive 2014/55/EU on electronic invoicing in public procurement in Germany, the National IT Planning Council has made the following decisions:

• In June 2017, it was mandated for public authorities to receive and process XRechnung invoices. The XRechnung is a Core Invoice User Specification (CIUS) of the European Norm (EN) 16931 on e-invoicing. The KoSIT (Coordination Office for IT Standards) was given the responsibility to maintain XRechnung.
• In October 2018, the National IT Planning Council decided that every public authority has to be reachable via PEPPOL if they offer a webservice for electronic invoices. It is determined by the dates of the European Directive 2014/55/EU.
• In June 2018 the KoSIT has become the German PEPPOL Authority (PA).

Use of PEPPOL in Germany

The following PEPPOL components are currently in use in Germany:

• Transport Infrastructure (Access Points and SMP providers)
• e-Invoicing

PEPPOL Authority

The KoSIT is the German PEPPOL Authority. It is located within the e-government division of the core administration of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, and is a permanent organization of the National IT Planning Council.

The main tasks of KoSIT are to assist the IT Planning Council in adopting IT interoperability and IT security standards and to manage joint federal and state-level e-government projects.

Another key task of the KoSIT in the role of the German PEPPOL Authority is the definition of national specifics regarding e-invoicing. Each PA in the participating countries can write down the national specifications in an Annex 5. You find a complete list of the Annexes 5 here. Addressing the German public administration via PEPPOL network requires the compliance with the standard XRechnung and the transport protocol AS4. Even though AS4 will not be mandatory until 01.02.2020 in the other PEPPOL countries, please note that it is already mandatory in Germany.

Contact:

Please contact the PEPPOL team at the KoSIT by sending an email to: peppol@finanzen.bremen.de

For further information log on to www.xoev.de/de/xrechnung (in German).

Koordinierungsstelle für IT Standards (KoSIT)

Freie Hansestadt Bremen

Senatorin für Finanzen

Rudolf-Hilferding-Platz 1

28195 Bremen

Email: peppol@finanzen.bremen.de