Regarding the resignation of Vasko Kovacevski, head of the state owned ELEM/ESM power company ,VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski said that under his term the once profitable company had to be propped up with 200 million EUR from the budget just to keep the lights on.

Only in 2022, the citizens, not the Government but the citizens, paid 200 million EUR out of their pockets to support ESM or ELEM. The money were used for secretive, no-bid contracts to dig coal in Bitola, where we have strong indications that the money were used to buy homes on the Aegean coast for all involved, Mickoski said.

Energy production in Macedonia collapsed due to corruption and mismanagement in ELEM, and the company had to import electricity from Bulgaria and coal from Greece and Kosovo.