EU VAT guide
VIES service unavailable
VIES can be unavailable because the EU gateway is down, a national registry is offline, or a temporary maintenance window is active.
VIES can be unavailable because the EU gateway is down, a national registry is offline, or a temporary maintenance window is active.
What to do
Wait a few minutes and retry. If the same country keeps failing, the member-state registry may be unavailable.
For urgent cases, contact the relevant national tax administration or ask the customer for supporting registration evidence.
Validating VAT numbers at volume?
Join the batch/API list for CSV validation, retries, audit exports, and developer access.
Related VIES guides
- Is VIES down?Live VIES status, country by country. See which EU member-state VAT registries are answering right now, read from the European Commission's own availability table every 15 minutes.
- MS_UNAVAILABLE VIES errorMS_UNAVAILABLE means a member-state VAT registry did not answer — it does not mean the VAT number is invalid. See which EU registries are down right now and when to retry.
- Invalid VAT number in VIESWhy an EU VAT number may appear invalid in VIES.
- VIES TIMEOUT errorWhat the VIES TIMEOUT error means and how to handle delayed VAT checks.
- GLOBAL_MAX_CONCURRENT_REQ VIES errorUnderstand the GLOBAL_MAX_CONCURRENT_REQ VIES error and safe retry behavior.
- MS_MAX_CONCURRENT_REQ VIES errorMS_MAX_CONCURRENT_REQ means one national VAT registry is refusing concurrent VIES requests, not that the VAT number is bad. How to back off safely, plus live per-country VIES status.