Experts say businesses will soon have to comply with more than 20 regulations in order to secure their subsidies, the European Parliament's Agriculture Committee heard this week.
But proposals to simplify the system could reduce the burden of red tape, and so costs affecting food firms and farmers, including those in the dairy industry.
Britain's National Farmers' Union (NFU) presented 266 pages of documents to be completed by all producers in the UK looking for Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funding.
"It's a nightmare for farmers," Peter Kendall, NFU chairman, told the committee.
Around 70 per cent of the infringements recorded by the Commission in 2005 related to minor problems such as earmarks lost by animals, according to Pekka Pesonen, Copa-Cogeca's Secretary-General, who represented EU farming organisations.
Fines are handed out every year as a result of CAP money that has been misspent. Last month, the Commission said it would claim back €285m from the last year alone.
The European Commission proposed measures to simplify CAP subsidies in March.
These included handing out more information, more tolerance for minor infringements, and greater harmony on the frequency of inspections across the EU.
Mariann Fischer Boel, EU agriculture commissioner, said last week she favoured "light-touch regulation" for the CAP. She will preside over a Commission 'health check' of the current system next year.
But she re-iterated that a cross-compliance regulatory system should continue, and that it was right to bring in new conditions for subsidies that emphasised environmental responsibility.
