BRUSSELS — One morning this spring, lawmakers crowded into a committee room filled with staffers, lobbyists and environmentalists to vote on a flurry of bills that would set the course for the European Union’s $65-billion-a-year farm policy.

For critics of the subsidy system, one item was of special interest. It was known as the “Babis Amendment,” after Andrej Babis, the billionaire agriculturalist and prime minister of the Czech Republic. It was designed to prohibit politicians who hand out European Union farm subsidies from receiving the funds themselves.

Mr. Babis is Exhibit A of how the system benefits the wealthy and connected. His government shapes agricultural subsidy policies in the Czech Republic. It also gave $42 million in European subsidies last year to his domestic companies, according to a New York Times analysis. His holdings in Germany, Hungary and Slovakia received another $7 million.

“The vote is open,” the agricultural committee chairman declared.

Eleven seconds passed.

Then the chairman simply said: “Rejected.”