(BRUSSELS) - The European Commission called for "urgent action" in the fight against organised crime in Bulgaria Tuesday, after two high-profile figures were shot dead in 24 hours.

"Urgent action is required in the area of fighting organised crime in Bulgaria," spokesman Mark Gray told reporters in Brussels, after sending condolences to the victims' loved ones.

"The killings are not just another statistic," he said. "Unfortunately these shootings have contined to take place on a regular basis over the last couple of years and without successful prosecution."

Georgy Stoev, known as the chronicler of the underworld for his nine books on the origins of the Bulgarian mafia, was killed just after noon Monday outside a Sofia hotel with a single gunshot to the head.

Late on Sunday, Borislav Georgiev, the chief executive of Atomenergoremont, the company maintaining the reactors at Bulgaria's Kozloduy nuclear power plant, was shot dead in his apartment building with two bullets to the head.

Gray welcomed a move by the Bulgarian government to organise a meeting of "all enforcement bodies in order to take urgent action and also to establish whether there is a link to organised crime networks".

Bulgaria, which joined the EU in 2007, has been criticised by Brussels for failing to curb high-level corruption and organised crime after dozens of businessmen, gang bosses and others were shot on its streets in recent years.

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