MCP

EU invoicing rules in your AI assistant. Finally.

Daniel Plomp

05 Mar 2026 — 3 min read

Try this: figure out the e-invoicing requirements for sending a B2B invoice from the Netherlands to Italy. Go ahead. I'll wait.

You'll end up with 14 browser tabs, three conflicting PDFs from 2019, and a growing suspicion that the EU designed this system specifically to punish developers.

Every EU country has its own VAT rates. Its own e-invoicing mandates. Its own preferred formats. Italy uses FatturaPA through SDI. Germany is rolling out XRechnung. France has its own timeline that keeps shifting. Poland just launched KSeF. And that's before you get into reverse charge rules, OSS thresholds, or the fun question of "which fields are actually required on this invoice."

I spent way too long trying to keep track of all this for a project I was building. At some point I realized: this isn't a coding problem. It's a knowledge problem. And knowledge problems are exactly what MCP servers are good at.

What I built

euinvoice-mcp is an open source MCP server that gives your AI assistant structured access to European invoicing rules. 31 countries. 10 tools. 4 data resources.

Install it once:

npx euinvoice-mcp

Add it to Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "euinvoice": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "euinvoice-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Done. Now you can ask things like:

"What are the VAT rates in Germany?"
"Is e-invoicing mandatory for B2B in France yet?"
"Compare invoicing requirements between Spain and Portugal"
"What fields do I need on a cross-border invoice to Italy?"

Your AI assistant answers with actual structured data instead of hallucinated guesses from its training set.

Why MCP, not a REST API

I could have built this as an API. Slap on some endpoints, write docs, charge per request. The standard playbook.

But here's the thing. Nobody wants to integrate another API for reference data. You don't want to write HTTP calls and parse JSON just to look up a VAT rate. You want to ask a question and get an answer.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the bridge between AI assistants and structured data. Anthropic launched it, and the ecosystem has exploded. Over 17,000 MCP servers now, integrated into Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, and more.

The distribution model is beautiful in its simplicity. A developer adds three lines to their config. No API keys. No authentication. No billing. Just npx euinvoice-mcp and it works.

For reference data like invoicing rules, this is the right shape. You don't need real-time API calls. You need a knowledgeable assistant that actually knows the rules instead of making them up.

What's covered

The server handles the full EU invoicing landscape:

VAT rates. Standard, reduced, super-reduced, and parking rates for all 31 countries. Including the recent changes: Finland going to 25.5%, Estonia to 22%, Slovakia to 23%.

E-invoicing mandates. Which countries require e-invoicing, for which transaction types, through which systems. Italy's SDI, Germany's ZRE, Poland's KSeF, Romania's RO e-Factura.

Format specifications. UBL, CII, Factur-X, XRechnung, FatturaPA, Peppol BIS. What they are, how they differ, when to use which.

Field validation. Required fields per country and transaction type. B2B, B2G, B2C. The common EU baseline plus country-specific extras like Portugal's ATCUD and QR code requirements.

Reverse charge rules. When it applies, what goes on the invoice, how the buyer handles it.

OSS rules. One-Stop Shop for cross-border B2C sales. Thresholds, registration, reporting.

Country comparisons. Side-by-side comparison of any two countries. Useful when you're expanding into a new market and need to know what changes.

Who this is for

If you're building invoicing software, accounting tools, or any SaaS that touches European transactions, this saves you hours of research.

If you're a freelancer sending invoices across EU borders and you're never quite sure if you're doing it right, this gives you a reliable second opinion through your AI assistant.

If you're a developer who just got tasked with "make our invoices compliant for the German market" and you're staring into the void, this is your flashlight.

Try it

The whole thing is open source, MIT licensed.

Website: euinvoice.dev
GitHub: Artisan-at-Work/euinvoice-mcp
npm: euinvoice-mcp

Three lines in your config. That's it. Your AI assistant now knows more about EU invoicing than most accountants.

Contributions are welcome. The data covers 2024/2025 rules, but EU invoicing is a moving target. SAF-T reporting, withholding tax rules, VIES validation. There's always more to add.

If this saves you even one afternoon of reading EU directives, it was worth building.