This only seems to cover invoicing the public sector, I don't see anything about B2B there. The dashboard mentions, "15 countries introduced obligations for issuing B2G eInvoices".
Germany and France, at least, don’t have the issues mentioned here, as our e-invoicing standard is XML based (apparently now also compatible with PEPPOL XML) and doesn’t require an extra network with service fees or certifications.
Don't know how it relates to PEPPOL, but Finland is pretty much all in on e-invoicing and has been for years. As a consumer, I get e-invoices from my building management, insurance company, the tax administration, my credit card company, my phone operator, my electricity company and even the place I order domestic domains from.
It's really nice though. I can set invoices to be paid automatically when they're under n€ and don't have to do anything to keep up with all of my payments.
Having moved over to the continent last year though, I am now having to deal with an enormous flood of paper.
Frankly if you are a business, having to pay a per year fee plus extra per invoice just so it all can be standardised and reduce the paper flood shouldn't be an issue, as long as the fees are not too great.
The problem, as far as I see it, isn't electronic invoicing in itself, or even the format. It's the usage of the PEPPOL network. The network isn't free. Nothing is stopping anyone from creating invoices in UBL format and sending those by email (or any other means). But in countries where usage of the PEPPOL network is required, that's no longer an option.
the old system was free and there were a few public systems that allowed you to manage things manually via web or apps (e.g. chamber of commerce associations, tax agency etc) but most people went through some SaaS service to manage invoices anyway, so my assumption is that the peppol costs would be absorbed by those now.
I'm not an invoice-using resident there so I don't know for sure, sorry.
Edit: quick googling found a few services that allow you to do electronic invoicing (peppol included) for €30/year.
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/display/D...