use a hash!? and: what do you need the parentheses for?

sub format {
    my %replace = (
      ' & CO [^,]+' => ' AND CO',
      '&' => 'AND',

      #followed by [^,]+
      map( {(
        quotemeta($_).'[^,]+' , ''
        )}
        #leading space
        map(" $_",
            qw/EUR1 EUR2 EUR4 EUR8 EUR0. CHF Y5 LTD INTL/,
            'NV ','FIN '
        ),
        #no leading space
        '$','NON-CUM'
      ),
      '\s+$' => '',
      #others...
    );

    # search longest first
    for(reverse sort keys %replace){
      $long =~ s/$_/$replace{$_}/g; #/g seems usefull
    }
}
[download]

edit: missing replacement for '\s+$' added

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