Skopje, 10 September 2026 (MIA) -- No events organized to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the country's independence required any government funding or money taken from the national budget, the government's spokeswoman Marija Miteva said Thursday.

Miteva said the music concerts were not paid for by citizens but covered by the State Lottery's "undistributed profits."

She said that the government during its 167th session had instructed the State Lottery "to provide funds from its undistributed profits planned for 2024 in the amount of Mden 300 million for sponsoring the events, as well as to announce a public call for bids for the implementation of the sponsored events."

She said the celebration began Aug. 2 in Bitola with a performance by Steve Aoki. Other featured music acts performing across the country included Paul Oakenfold, Paul van Dyk and José Carreras alongside Macedonian artists. The culmination was the David Guetta concert at the City Stadium, which she said drew 50,000 people.

"When Guetta's Sept. 8 performance was first announced, it raised questions about why he was chosen and why the concert was scheduled on Independence Day," Miteva said.

She said it showed that "the state can organize world-scale events."

Guetta's concert, she added, was only one in a series of concerts "and not a substitute for Macedonian culture and Macedonian artists."

"About 95% of the entire program were Macedonian performers and Macedonian stage content," Miteva said, praising the quality of the local music, stage and theater scene.

"The goal was not only to bring global names to Macedonia, but also to show that Macedonian artists deserve a big stage, a big audience and serious production support," she said.

Aleksandar Klimovski, the director of the State Lottery, outlined the legal basis for the celebration. 

"The State Lottery as a company is a separate legal entity," Klimovski said. 

"The government is the founder of the State Lottery," he said, adding that it was also the sole shareholder in the company. However, he said, the funding was provided on the basis of the Law on Sponsorships and Donations, and not on the Law on Public Procurement. 

Klimovski also stressed that the Mden 300 million was "company money." 

"This is money belonging to the company itself," he said. "The company is a separate legal entity that has a separate legal subjectivity, separate from the subjectivity of the government or any other institutions." 

"That the government is the founder of the company gives it its status as a shareholder. Let's make it clear: This money was not budget money," he said.

The State Lottery director said the State Lottery money entered the national budget only after company officials declared a dividend from undistributed profit and ordered it paid into the treasury.

"Only after the profits pass all company procedures and at that moment are paid into the treasury do they become budget funds," he said, adding that as long as the money was in the company's account, it was "corporate money." 

He then explained the procedure of selecting the concert organizers. Only one bid was received -- from Stardust, the trademark holder for Avalon International Booking, the country's leading music event promotion agency.

Boban Miloshevski from Avalon said they had faced "some revolt" at the beginning.

"But we knew that it would be neutralized with time," he said, adding that the public had assumed the celebration would only feature the Guetta concert.

"No, our intention was to celebrate for a month, to celebrate throughout Macedonia and to include all target audience groups," he said, adding that the events were "both celebratory and educational."

Miloshevski said the Guetta concert was the largest Avalon has ever organized.

"Maybe the David Guetta project seems strange, unusual and unnecessary to you, but let me tell you what it is and what our intention was with David Guetta. What we did with David Guetta in Skopje is exactly the same as, say, organizing a Formula 1 race in Stajkovci with all the necessary features Formula 1 requires," he said.

Stajkovci is a village in Skopje's Municipality of Gazi Baba. It is known for growing high quality tomatoes as well as other produce.

"All of Eastern Europe was talking about Macedonia celebrating 35 years with a David Guetta full 'Monolith' show," Miloshevski said. 

"David Guetta played this kind of show this year only in France -- three concerts in Paris and one in Marseille," he said. 

The concert organizer pointed out that other concert organizers marveled at the scale of the production.

"All my colleagues who do much larger concerts than we do came to Skopje to see and be amazed. It was impossible that a full 'Monolith' show, of the literally same proportions as it was in Paris, was put on in Skopje," he said. mr/