Greece writes mandatory B2B e-invoicing into law, leaving scope and start dates to a later decision (Law 5222/2025)

What changed in detail

Law 5222/2025, published in ΦΕΚ Α΄ 134 of 28 July 2025, is mainly the new National Customs Code. Its Article 239 rewrites Article 14 of Law 4308/2014 (the Greek Accounting Standards), which governs electronic invoices. The article cites Article 1(2) and (3) of Directive (EU) 2025/516, the ViDA provisions that let Member States require e-invoicing without asking the EU for a derogation.

The new Article 14(1) says that an invoice must be issued exclusively electronically, in the format set by ministerial decision under paragraph 5(a), when it is for:

• a sale in Greece to another entity subject to Law 4308/2014;
• a sale to a business in a country outside the EU, other than retail;
• public procurement or other spending by General Government bodies.

Under paragraph 3, a domestic recipient in the first and third cases must accept the e-invoice. Paragraph 5 has the format follow the European e-invoicing standard and leaves the technical rules to the AADE.

The law sets no dates and no thresholds. Paragraph 6 leaves the scope, the start date and other implementing matters to a joint decision of the Minister of National Economy and Finance and the AADE Governor. Under Article 275(1), the law entered into force on publication.

What it means

This law is the legal basis, not the timetable. On its own it obliged nobody to issue an e-invoice by any date. The obligations came from the later joint decisions, which brought in larger businesses first and the rest in a second phase. That second phase has since moved to 2 November 2026, with parallel use of ERP systems allowed until 31 January 2027 (phase 2 moved to 2 November 2026; see also the original phase 2 record).

Article 14 remains the provision in force in November 2026. To find out when the obligation starts for a given business, read the joint decision and the AADE’s announcements, not this law. The value of the law is that the mandate rests on a statute rather than only on AADE decisions.