In December, the European Parliament adopted an “Omnibus” simplification package for the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), aimed at reducing administrative burdens and easing the inspection pressure on farms. The European Commission argues that the changes can deliver tangible time and cost savings for farmers, while making payment and control systems easier to manage. Critics, however, say procedural fixes will not address the deeper economic and regulatory challenges facing European agriculture.
“The Omnibus contains a lot of simplifications,” said Krzysztof Hetman, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Poland’s Polish People’s Party (PSL), speaking to Newseria. “First of all, it introduces one inspection per year, and it removes penalties and controls for farmers with holdings up to 30 hectares. There is also far more flexibility and simplification across the administrative requirements that have grown around agricultural activity for Polish and European farmers.”
What the Omnibus package changes
The package includes a broad set of measures: simplified reporting obligations, greater flexibility in meeting environmental conditionality requirements, and wider use of administrative and satellite-based checks instead of on-site visits. It also strengthens simplified support schemes for smaller farms.
Under the proposals described in the package, small farms would be eligible for support of up to €3,000 per year, alongside an additional one-off payment of up to €75,000 to develop their business activity. Another element is a higher annual lump-sum payment for small farmers—something the Commission says should improve financial stability while lowering administrative servicing costs.
A major operational change is the principle of one coordinated inspection per year and greater flexibility toward smaller holdings. The Commission stresses that the goal is not to eliminate oversight, but to plan it better and reduce duplication across different legal requirements. In the current system, farmers can be subject to multiple parallel verification processes in a single year—covering direct payments, environmental conditionality, eco-schemes, and animal welfare obligations.
“Let farmers work in the field, not at the desk”
Hetman argues that streamlining inspections can have a real day-to-day impact on farm operations. “It’s a completely different situation to have 12 inspections during the year—dealing with inspectors and providing documents every month—versus doing it once a year,” he said. “Of course, that’s an exaggerated example, but the point is that the farmer should be in the field, able to work and cultivate the land, not sitting at a desk preparing paperwork for institutions that happen to arrive for an inspection.”
Even though physical on-farm inspections have been gradually reduced as satellite monitoring and administrative data analysis expanded, many farmers say the bureaucratic pressure has not fallen at the same pace. Increasingly, decisions to deny or withdraw payments can be based on document and data reviews without a farm visit—something the Commission acknowledges has contributed to uncertainty among farmers.
Critics: simplifications are “cosmetic” versus real problems
Waldemar Buda, an MEP from Poland’s Law and Justice party (PiS), argues the package focuses on formalities rather than core constraints on farm profitability. “These are formal, procedural changes—forms, applications, the size and number of inspections,” he said. “From the perspective of the overall system, these are cosmetic. We didn’t reverse the river; we reduced the growth of administration a bit.”
Buda contends that inspections are not farmers’ primary concern. “The problem is that they don’t qualify for certain payments, and that standards are too high, which raises production costs,” he said. “Inspections happen, but typically in justified cases—after incorrect information is submitted or when there are doubts. It is not the dominant problem.”
Commission: up to €1.6 billion in annual savings for farmers
The Omnibus package is part of a wider EU effort to simplify regulation. The European Commission estimates the measures could bring farmers up to €1.6 billion in annual savings, while cutting costs for member-state administrations by around €210 million per year through reduced reporting and control obligations.
Polish MEPs nevertheless argue the changes do not go far enough. In their view, administrative simplification can improve everyday farm management, but it cannot solve all the pressures weighing on the agricultural sector.
“Farmers’ voices have been heard to some extent,” Hetman said. “But I have no doubts that pressure must be put on the European Commission—from us, as we are doing, and from farmers—so that these simplifications go further.”
Farmers’ groups: direction is good, but scope is limited
Agricultural organizations have offered a similar assessment. COPA-COGECA has said the Commission’s proposals move in the right direction, but in their current form remain limited and do not meet key farm needs—especially around regulatory certainty and investment conditions. The group also argues that the package lacks more ambitious solutions concerning major environmental legislation that most strongly affects costs and the conditions for farming.
Hetman points out that farmers’ discontent has been visible in recent months through protests in Brussels. “Farmers don’t belong in the streets—they belong in the field and on the farm, as they keep saying,” he said. “A protest is like using an atomic weapon by farmers, because they also want to farm in peace—sow, harvest, plough—not be out on the street fighting for their future.”
The bigger flashpoint: CAP financing after 2028
The protests also relate to the debate over how the CAP will be financed after 2028. An initial European Commission concept for a new multiannual EU budget structure would remove a dedicated agricultural budget and instead merge funds with other instruments into a single national “basket.” Critics argue this would force agriculture to compete directly with other priorities—such as roads or research—within each member state.
Buda warns that, without a clear settlement on post-2028 financing, administrative simplification will not materially improve farms’ situation. He argues that the sector needs not only to preserve funding, but to increase it—especially as production costs continue to rise.
According to European Commission data cited in the debate, the CAP budget for the current 2021–2027 financial framework exceeds €386 billion. Preliminary Commission proposals for 2028–2034 would reduce the overall CAP budget to around €300 billion. That would be not only nominally lower than the current period, but would also fail to account for the cumulative impact of multi-year inflation on farming costs.
COPA-COGECA has warned that a 20% cut to the CAP budget could put food security at risk for 450 million Europeans.
“The proposal is €80 billion smaller,” Buda said. “That doesn’t even offset inflation, and it reduces the budget by 20%. If, on top of that, funds are put into one basket, agriculture in every country will have to fight for them, because it’s a maximum amount that could just as easily go to roads or science. Farmers won’t have a guarantee that the money will go to agriculture.”
He also warned that CAP’s second pillar—focused on agricultural modernization—could be absorbed into broader national policy frameworks, potentially diverting investment away from rural areas. “It will likely end up with more going to cities, and farmers and rural areas losing out,” Buda predicted.
A useful step, but not a full answer
The Omnibus simplification package is intended to reduce friction in how CAP support is administered and controlled—particularly for smaller holdings—and to shift oversight toward better coordination and more digital methods. Supporters say this will free farmers to focus more on production than paperwork. Critics counter that, without addressing the level of standards, eligibility rules, and—above all—the size and structure of the CAP budget after 2028, the reforms may remain a partial fix for a sector facing structural cost and competitiveness pressures.
