What exactly does the Belgian obligation entail?
From 1 January 2026, Belgian VAT-liable businesses must exchange invoices with other Belgian companies as structured electronic documents via Peppol. A standard PDF sent by email no longer meets that requirement, even if it has a perfectly formatted invoice layout. Non-compliance exposes the Belgian party to fines of up to 5,000 euros. That is the problem on your Belgian customer's side. But that customer now also expects its suppliers, including Dutch ones, to speak the same language.
As a Dutch supplier, am I subject to this law?
No, the Belgian law applies to Belgian VAT-liable entities. Dutch companies are not legally bound by that obligation. Even so, that is not the end of the story. Belgian buyers who are themselves required to receive structured invoices are increasingly selecting suppliers based on Peppol support. Those who cannot offer it risk payment delays, additional administrative burden on the customer's side, or simply being disqualified from new orders. The obligation is Belgian; the consequences are cross-border.
What about the Netherlands itself, when will the obligation arrive here?
The Netherlands is lagging behind its neighbours. The government is working on an implementation direction and expects draft legislation in 2026, followed by definitive legislation around 2028 and a phased introduction between 2030 and 2032. The European ViDA directive (VAT in the Digital Age) mandates cross-border B2B e-invoicing from 1 July 2030. That is the hard EU deadline. For businesses already working with Belgian or other European parties, the practical pressure is therefore greater than Dutch legislation alone would suggest.
What does this mean for those processing documents?
The shift to Peppol changes how invoices arrive. Where PDFs by email still make up the majority today, the share of structured XML messages will grow in the coming years. That sounds like an improvement, and it is, but it requires an adjustment to the processing workflow. A structured Peppol invoice is processed differently from a scanned document or a PDF. At the same time, for the large volume of incoming invoices, little will change for now: suppliers from countries without an obligation will simply continue sending PDFs. Finance teams will therefore not receive one new format, but an ever-larger mix of Peppol messages, PDFs, Excel attachments, and scanned receipts. Consistent processing is hardest to achieve precisely during that transition period.
Automating now already makes sense, even without a Dutch obligation
Waiting for Dutch legislation is understandable, but practical reality forces the issue sooner. Businesses that already process invoices automatically, regardless of format, find that switching to Peppol processing later is a smaller step. The structure of a structured e-invoice is more machine-readable than a free-form PDF, but extracting data, matching it to a purchase order, and delivering it to the accounting system is the same process in either case. Getting that process right now takes far less effort than overhauling it all at once in 2028 or 2030.