SNP accused of 'negligence' as it faces handing back £450m of unspent EU money
The huge blow is apparently a result of failing to allocate the cash to tackling poverty and economic development before a deadline this month.
SNP ministers have been accused of "negligence on an unforgivable scale" amid claims Scotland faces handing £450million of unspent funding back to the European Union.
Scotland is set to return 28 percent of the cash allocated from Brussels' structural and investment funding over the past six years.
The funds were earmarked for economic and anti-poverty targets.
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said: "This is waste and negligence on an unforgivable scale.
The SNP have poured half a billion pounds down the drain. Their new slogan should be 'squander for Scotland'. This funding could have been spent on vital infrastructure across Scotland, yet SNP incompetence has lost it for good."
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Wales is on course to return nine percent of its money, England six percent and Northern Ireland two percent.
Scotland has already returned €199 million from the funding pot, according to EU data, and has now failed to spend another €331m that formed part of the six-year programme. Together they add up to almost £451m at current exchange rates.
Dame Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour's deputy leader, blamed the Scottish Government's "incompetence" for missing out on the EU money.
She said: "Our NHS is in crisis, child poverty is stubbornly high, and economic growth is sluggish — that the SNP government is handing back half a billion pounds of funding while Scots face crumbling public services and infrastructure is a dereliction of duty and negligence on a remarkable scale.
"Vital projects across Scotland are being left high and dry while the SNP allows vital funding to slip away. Scots should not pay the price of SNP incompetence."
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A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "These figures do not reflect the totality of spending to date from the 2014-20 European structural funds programmes.
"Final expenditure figures will not be known until 2025, when the programmes formally close.
"Until then, the Scottish Government intends to maximise reimbursement from the European Commission where possible.
"The use of European Structural Funds is bound by strict conditions and all stakeholders of the programmes are responsible for complying with its regulations.
"Thousands of people, businesses and communities have benefitted from the investment of the 2014-20 funds in Scotland to date."
