There are two e-invoicing stories running at the moment, and they are constantly confused with each other. One is the German B2B e-invoicing obligation, live since 2025 and phasing in — that is the subject of the post on XRechnung and ZUGFeRD. The other is ViDA, the EU package that from 2030 governs cross-border B2B transactions and replaces the EC Sales List.

This post is about the second one only. If you want to know what you have to do next year, the other post is the right one; if you want to know what your processes are heading towards by 2030, stay here.

ViDA at a glance

On 11 March 2025, the Council of the EU adopted the VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) package, with the European Commission confirming a phased rollout until January 2035. The legal acts were published in the EU Official Journal on 25 March 2025.

ViDA has three pillars: e-invoicing & Digital Reporting Requirements (DRR) for intra-EU B2B transactions, rules for electronic interfaces/marketplaces, and simplifications towards a Single VAT Registration (SVR).

Legal acts & entry into force

The package includes Council Directive (EU) 2025/516, Council Regulation (EU) 2025/517 (amending Regulation 904/2010 on administrative cooperation) and Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/518 (amending Implementing Regulation 282/2011). All three were published on 25 March 2025 and entered into force twenty days later.

The three pillars — what changes?

1) E-invoicing & Digital Reporting (DRR)

For intra-EU B2B supplies, structured e-invoices (EN 16931) and near real-time reporting of core invoice data are introduced. Go-live: 1 July 2030. Member States with domestic real-time systems must align by 1 January 2035.

With DRR in place, the EC Sales List (ESL/recapitulative statement) is phased out — a widely noted effect in official and professional summaries. Practically, e-invoicing becomes the standard for intra-EU B2B while digital reporting replaces ESL.

2) Platform economy (deemed supplier)

For electronic interfaces (e.g., short-term accommodation and passenger transport platforms), deemed-supplier rules and extended obligations will apply in defined cases. Many provisions apply from 1 July 2028.

3) Single VAT Registration (SVR) & OSS/IOSS fine-tuning

ViDA expands mechanisms so that fewer local VAT registrations are needed for specific flows (“Single VAT Registration”). In parallel, OSS/IOSS receive clarifications and technical improvements, with early changes appearing in 2027/2028.

Timeline 2025 → 2035 (highlights)

2025: Adoption 11 Mar; OJ publication 25 Mar; entry into force mid-April. Member States may require domestic e-invoicing without prior EU authorisation.
1 Jan 2027: Early clarifications incl. OSS/IOSS and cooperation rules.
1 Jul 2028: Platform pillar and first SVR simplifications begin to apply.
1 Jul 2030: DRR + e-invoicing for intra-EU B2B go live EU-wide.
by 1 Jan 2035: Alignment of domestic real-time systems to the EU standard.

What this means operationally (data, process, deadlines)

Invoice format: e-invoices in the sense of EN 16931 (the semantic core model). A PDF on its own no longer qualifies, however neatly it is laid out — what counts is structured data a machine can read.
Reporting windows: near real-time. The legal acts set very short deadlines after an invoice is issued, with the details depending on the constellation (self-billing, for instance). Process and IT chains have to be built for a daily or multi-day reporting cadence rather than a monthly one.
Master data obligations: quality of VAT IDs, threshold and place-of-supply logic and transaction references becomes decisive, because the administration validates against them. Data that was merely adequate for a monthly return will not survive automated checks.
Retirement of the ESL: for cross-border B2B turnover, DRR replaces the EC Sales List. Anything that today reads ESL data — internal reconciliations included — needs redesigning rather than porting.

Administrative cooperation & VIES

For administrative cooperation and mutual assistance, ViDA amends Regulation 904/2010 through the new Regulation 2025/517. That upgrades the data flows and control mechanisms between member states for the digital reporting logic, including VIES and centralised registers — which in practice means a discrepancy is spotted by a machine in another country rather than at your next audit.

What ViDA actually means for an online seller

Most ViDA summaries are written for group tax departments. For an online retailer the three pillars come down to three questions.

Do I sell B2B into other EU countries? Then the DRR pillar hits you directly from July 2030. What is a quarterly EC Sales List today becomes a per-invoice transmission within a few days. The difference is not the workload, it is the tempo: a process that tidies up once a quarter does not survive a daily reporting obligation. If you already match payments to orders cleanly, most of that work is behind you.

Do I sell purely B2C through marketplaces? Then the DRR pillar changes little for you at first — pure B2C distance sales continue to run through OSS. The third pillar matters more: Single VAT Registration is meant to remove exactly the local registrations that foreign warehousing creates today. For FBA sellers on the Europe-wide programmes, that is the package's most practically valuable promise.

Am I a platform myself? The deemed-supplier rules from July 2028 target short-term accommodation and passenger transport. If you operate an interface through which third parties sell, settle the contractual roles early — not in 2028.

The part worth taking seriously already

The year 2030 invites you to put this down. That is risky for one reason: DRR requires structured data per invoice, at a quality that cannot be cleaned up retrospectively. If you record revenue as lump entries today without keeping the individual evidence linked, you will have to change that anyway — whether summary entries are permitted is untouched by this, but how clean the layer underneath them looks is not.

Equally important: VAT ID quality. DRR builds on the tax administration's validation routines. An unvalidated customer number is already a reverse-charge risk today — the VAT number validator turns that into a one-second question — and from 2030 it additionally becomes a filing that gets rejected.

Readiness checklist (2025–2030)

Establish e-invoicing capability (EN 16931, number ranges, clear process ownership).
Align reporting processes and interfaces with the short DRR deadlines: capture → validation → submission → acknowledgements.
Review platform exposure (accommodation, transport) and adapt contracts to the deemed-supplier rules, which apply from 07/2028.
Map the registration landscape and plan for the SVR simplifications, including the OSS/IOSS updates.
Keep the roadmap to 2035 running — the Commission has published an implementation strategy with guidance, tooling and timings.

ViDA 2025 explained: e-invoicing, Digital Reporting & Single VAT Registration — what changes now and what’s coming by 2035