It was delayed the adoption of the European model of electronic invoicing in public procurement

Portugal - 17 / 01 / 2019

Tax Alert 5-2019

Decree-Law no. 123/2018, 28 December, was officially published, that amends the Decree-Law no. 111-B/2017, 31 August 2017, which modified the Public Contracts Code (“CCP”) in order to transpose the Directive 2014/55/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014, which established the mandatory use of electronic invoicing in public procurement in the European Union and adopted an European model of electronic invoicing.

We remind that in Portugal this obligation should have been applicable since 1 January of 2019 for all the enterprises engaged in public procurement (with the exception of contracts declared as secret or subjected to special security measures).

Due to the complexity of this procedure, this new Decree-Law establishes its gradual implementation, starting from the subsequent deadlines for the following entities:

a) As from 18 April of 2019: for the State and public institutes;

b) As from 18 April of 2020:

For the remaining contracting public entities, such as autonomous regions, local authorities, independent administrative bodies, the Bank of Portugal, public foundations, public associations and other public entities which contracts are classified by the parties as administrative contracts or submitted to public law;

For the contracting public entities that, regardless its public or private nature, signed contracts under material administrative functions;

For private counterparts which are not classified as micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in the terms defined above in paragraph c).

c) As from 1 January of 2021: for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (as defined in the European Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC, of 6 May 2003) and for the public entities when acting as counterparts.

It should be noted that a Ministerial Order will be still adopted in order to regulate some aspects related with this subject.

The present Decree-Law came into force on 1 January of 2019.