Sign up to FREE email alerts from businessInsider - Daily Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

The EU has invested £379 million in 188 projects over the last five years to help create jobs and support the economy in Scotland.

That’s funding which has or will arrive through European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) between 2014 and 2020.

The figure includes money from the European Social Fund (focusing on skills and jobs) and the European Regional Development Fund (which focuses on correcting regional imbalances).

The data was compiled by myeu.uk - a website which allows you view areas and projects in the UK that have received funding from the EU.

Although this funding represents a large chunk of money from the EU, it doesn’t tell the full story.

As well as the £379m in structural and investment funds, Scotland has benefited from science funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 scheme, as well as money other EU funds, including Common Agricultural policy funding which goes towards farmers.

Of course, these EU funds are created from a budget which includes the amount that the UK pays into the EU each year.

The ESIF projects that received that largest amount of EU support in Scotland were:

• Scottish Funding Council's SFC Youth Employment Initiative project - £27,954,619

• SME Holding Fund LUPS project - £24,064,125

• Scottish Natural Heritage's Green Infrastructure Challenge Fund - LUPS project - £14,796,344

• Scottish Government's LCITP LUPS CITIES Demonstrator Support project - £12,000,000

• Zero Waste Scotland's Resource Efficiency (LUPS) project - £11,554,98

John Lees-Miller, one of the volunteers who helped put together myeu.uk said: “Before we started working on myeu.uk, we had completely tuned out of the Brexit debate.

“It was all very negative and depressing, so we wanted to do something to highlight the positive impact that the EU has had on the UK.

“We found a lot of data, but it was hidden away in databases and spreadsheets.

“By putting the data on a map, we hope to make it easy for everyone to see some of the things the EU has done for their local area.”

“We've learned that there are many different kinds of EU funding that come from different organisations within the EU.

“They each report on their activities independently, which makes it challenging to see the big picture sometimes.

“We started the project at a hackathon organised by TechForUK and BestForBritain. We've also worked with NHS Digital to find out how many NHS nurses and doctors are from the EU in each trust.”