OpenPeppol

What is OpenPeppol?

OpenPeppol AISBL is the international non-profit association (Association Internationale Sans But Lucratif, registered in Belgium) that owns and governs the Peppol network. It is the entity behind every Peppol specification — including Peppol BIS Billing 3.0, the Peppol code lists, the SML/SMP architecture, the AS4 transport profile, and the conformance and certification programmes for Access Points and Service Metadata Publishers.

If Peppol is the e-delivery network that ERP vendors plug into, OpenPeppol is the standards body and authority that decides how that network behaves. Every change to a BIS, every addition to a code list, and every new participant identifier scheme passes through OpenPeppol governance before reaching production.

History and Mandate

Peppol began as the PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement OnLine) project, an EU-funded initiative running from 2008 to 2012 to enable cross-border e-procurement between EU public-sector buyers. When the project ended, the participating governments and service providers established OpenPeppol AISBL in 2012 to continue the work as a permanent, member-funded organisation.

OpenPeppol's mandate has since expanded well beyond the original B2G procurement scope. Today it covers B2B billing, healthcare procurement, post-award processes, and increasingly the technical infrastructure for cross-border e-invoicing under regulatory mandates (ViDA, country-specific CTC systems that adopt Peppol as the delivery layer).

Governance Structure

OpenPeppol is governed by:

General Assembly — The supreme decision-making body, comprising all members. Approves statutes, budgets, and strategic direction.

Managing Committee — A seven-person elected board chaired by the Secretary General, which oversees the day-to-day running of the association between General Assemblies. Two members each are elected by the Service Provider, End User, and Policy Enabler stakeholder communities.

Secretary General — The senior elected officer, responsible for the operational direction of OpenPeppol.

Coordinating Committee — Coordinates technical work across the domain communities.

This governance is documented in the OpenPeppol Statutes and Internal Regulations, which are public and available on peppol.org.

Membership Categories

OpenPeppol has three full-membership stakeholder communities:

1. Policy Enablers — Government bodies and public-sector organisations, including all national Peppol Authorities.
2. Service Providers — Certified Access Point providers, SMP providers, and Pre-Award/Post-Award Service Providers — i.e. the technology vendors that actually move documents on the network.
3. End Users — Public-sector buyers, large private-sector suppliers, and other organisations that consume Peppol services rather than provide them.

Observers — academic institutions, trade bodies, and adjacent IT vendors — may attend meetings but cannot vote or hold elected positions.

Domain Communities

The technical work happens in Domain Communities, each focused on a slice of the Peppol agenda:

Post-Award Community (PoAC) — Owns the BIS Billing 3.0 specification, credit notes, and other post-award document types. This is the community most ERP vendors care about.

Pre-Award Community (PrAC) — Owns procurement-related documents (eTendering, eOrdering, eCatalogues).

eDelivery Community (eDeC) — Owns the underlying network: AS4, SML, SMP, certificates, and discovery. All Peppol Authorities and Service Providers must join eDeC.

Peppol Authority Community (PAC) — A discussion forum for the national Peppol Authorities.

Each community runs work groups that draft and maintain specifications, and each follows a public release cadence (typically May and November for BIS releases).

OpenPeppol vs. Peppol Authorities

A frequent point of confusion: OpenPeppol is not the same as a Peppol Authority.

OpenPeppol is the international body that owns the specifications.

A Peppol Authority (PA) is a national organisation — usually a government agency — that operates Peppol within a specific jurisdiction. Examples: Digdir (Norway), DBC (Denmark), PEPPOL Authority Germany at KoSIT, Valtiokonttori (Finland), AgID (Italy).

OpenPeppol delegates SMP accreditation and Service Provider onboarding within a country to the relevant PA. PAs may also impose national requirements on top of Peppol's baseline (additional code lists, mandatory document types, audit rules).

What OpenPeppol Publishes

The artefacts every ERP vendor depends on come from OpenPeppol:

BIS specifications — Billing 3.0, Catalogue, Order, Despatch Advice, etc.

Code lists — Participant identifier schemes, document type identifiers, process identifiers, payment means, allowance/charge reasons.

Validation artefacts — Official Schematron rule sets, distributed via GitHub (OpenPEPPOL/peppol-bis-invoice-3).

Transport profiles — AS4 profile, signing/encryption rules, certificate policies.

Discovery infrastructure — SML root, SMP query format, lookup endpoints.

What ERP Vendors Need to Know

1. Track the release calendar — OpenPeppol publishes BIS updates twice a year (May and November). Each release can change Schematron rules, code lists, and occasionally cardinality. Update your validators on each cycle.
2. Use official artefacts — Pull Schematron rules and code lists from the OpenPeppol GitHub or docs.peppol.eu. Reverse-engineering rules from third-party documentation drifts quickly.
3. Know your local Peppol Authority — Country-specific rules and accreditation paths come from the PA, not from OpenPeppol. If you operate in multiple countries, you may need to engage with several PAs.
4. Consider membership — Service Provider membership grants voting rights on BIS changes and access to draft specifications before public release. For ERP vendors building Peppol-native products, this can be worth the fee.
5. Don't confuse OpenPeppol governance with the legal mandate — OpenPeppol publishes specifications; legal mandates (ViDA, France's Sept 2026 reform, Germany's XRechnung mandate) come from EU and national legislators. Compliance requires both.

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