Utilities

European Union

This package contains a utility class called EuropeanUnion. It can tell if a country is (or was) the member of the EU on a given date, and can validate the format of EU VAT numbers.

Is Country an EU Member

To tell if a country is currently the member of the EU, use the isMemberState() method:

use Konekt\Address\Utils\EuropeanUnion;

EuropeanUnion::isMemberState('PT');
// => true

EuropeanUnion::isMemberState('US');
// => false

To check if a country was the part of the EU on a certain date, pass the second parameter:

EuropeanUnion::isMemberState('UK', new DateTime('2010-07-30'));
// => true

EuropeanUnion::isMemberState('UK', new DateTime('2024-03-11'));
// => false
// The UK has left the EU on 2020-01-31

EuropeanUnion::isMemberState('HR', new DateTime('2013-06-30'));
// => false

EuropeanUnion::isMemberState('HR', new DateTime('2013-07-01'));
// => true
// Croatia joined the EU on 2013-07-01

Validate EU VAT Number Format

To check whether a string has a valid EU VAT number format, use the validateVatNumberFormat() method. Every country has specific rules about the prefix, length and the possible characters at certain positions in their VAT numbers. The validation verifies against all these rules.

This check only validates the number format and does not do a VIES lookup to check if the VAT number is actually valid!

The method either returns the country code which the VAT number belongs to, or false if the string is not a valid EU VAT number:

EuropeanUnion::validateVatNumberFormat('1234');
// => false

EuropeanUnion::validateVatNumberFormat('DE332537240');
// => 'DE'

EuropeanUnion::validateVatNumberFormat('RO35409777');
// => 'RO'

EuropeanUnion::validateVatNumberFormat('DK123');
// => false

Greece and the United Kingdom have a different VAT ID prefix than their ISO country code. Even in their case, their country code is returned, and not the VAT ID prefix.

Greece and UK Examples:

// Greece has the `EL` VAT id prefix:
EuropeanUnion::validateVatNumberFormat('EL332537240');
// => GR

// The United Kingdom has the `GB` VAT id prefix:
EuropeanUnion::validateVatNumberFormat('GB123456789');
// => UK