VIES Validation Service is down, affecting EU VAT number validation

We have been informed that the VIES service used by our EU VAT Assistant to validate VAT numbers is currently inaccessible. Here is a screenshot from the European Commission website, taken today, 23rd January, at 11:30 GMT:

EU Commission – Website unavailable

This downtime will affect the validation operations performed by our plugin, which will be unable to validate VAT numbers. Unfortunately, this is outside of our control. We will have to wait until the service is back online, then the EU VAT Assistant will start working correctly again.

Apologies for the inconvenience on behalf of the team managing the EU website.

The Aelia Team