EU Company Registers Reveal Critical Gaps in VIES VAT Verification System

A developer building a free supplier-verification tool discovered that the EU's VIES VAT system can return a valid result for companies already in liquidation or struck off, because deregistration and insolvency are handled by separate authorities on different timelines. After manually reviewing ten national company registers, the developer found that only six countries — Romania, Estonia, France, Greece, Bulgaria, and Latvia — publicly report a company's operational status, such as insolvency or termination. Poland stands out as the only EU member state where public data allows verification that a bank account actually belongs to a VAT-registered supplier, thanks to a Ministry of Finance whitelist created for tax compliance reasons. Nine EU countries, including Germany, Italy, and Spain, have no free public company-data source at all, while seven others restrict access behind accounts, API keys, or paywalls. The findings highlight significant inconsistencies across EU member states that make automated supplier due diligence far more complex than relying on VIES alone.