Greece stands to lose up to 10 percent of its European Union farm subsidies because of shortcomings in its national land registration system, the European Commission said on Wednesday.
"We have written to the Greek authorities to say we are starting a procedure that could lead to a 10 percent cut in farm payments," Commission agriculture spokesman Michael Mann said.
He said the Commission had already had to recover some 600 million euros ($955 million) from Greece in the last two years because of problems with its Land Parcel Identification System.
"As a ballpark figure, I could say that between 200 and 300 million euros could be potentially affected," he said. Athens would make the payments to Greek farmers but would not be reimbursed by Brussels unless the shortcomings were rectified.
"This does not mean losses for Greek farmers, they would still get their money since it would not be the Commission paying it but it would have to come from the Greek government," he told a daily news briefing.
The computerised system, used to ensure that farm payments correspond to the correct farm area, suffered from IT problems, a shortage of staff and failure to cover the whole country, he said. "There are clearly problems," Mann said.