The caretaker government decided on Thursday to reward musician Marko Purisic, who performs under the stage name Baby Lasagna, with €50,000 for his second place at this year's Eurovision Song Contest and for his contribution to the promotion and international visibility of Croatia.

Purisic said he could not accept the reward from the government and asked them to donate the money to children’s haematology and oncology clinics.

“I thank the Croatian government for the €50,000 reward, but I can not accept it (…) because there are many other people and organisations that need this money more than me,” Marko Purisic wrote on Instagram.

He asked Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic to donate €25,000 to the Mladen Cepulic Institute of Paediatric Oncology and Haematology and the remaining €25,000 to the Department of Haematology, Oncology and Haematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation at the KBC Hospital in Zagreb.

Baby Lasagna came second in the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 with his song “Rim Tim Tagi Dim”, achieving the best result for Croatia to date. Switzerland’s Nemo took the win with the song “The Code”.