All three of Scotland’s Europa League qualifiers will have to start off in the first qualifying round with the matches to be played on June 27/28 and July 4/5.
In recent seasons the Scottish Cup winners have entered the Europa League at the second qualifying round which this year will be played on July 13 and 20.
The downgrading is as a result of Scotland’s co-efficient dropping down to 25 with Sweden and Norway now above Scotland.
The slide can be traced back to the SFA’s decision to award Rangers a licence to compete in the 2011/12 qualifiers despite having a £2.8m overdue tax bill which resulted in sheriff officers appearing at Ibrox.
Had the SFA applied the UEFA rules correctly Celtic would have been entered into the Champions League qualifiers which could have resulted in £20m coming into the Scottish game and valuable co-efficient points to be used for all clubs in subsequent years.
Rangers (IL) had qualified for the group phase of the Champions League in the three previous seasons but saw the bulk of the prize money used to reduce their debt with Lloyds TSB.
A group of Celtic shareholders have taken the 2011 licence with UEFA due to Stewart Regan’s failure to discuss why the SFA refused to alert UEFA that Rangers (IL) had an overdue tax payable on 30 June 2011.