European Union's budget rules need to be simpler - IMF's Lagarde

VIENNA (Reuters) - The European Union's fiscal rules as laid out in the Stability and Growth Pact need to be simpler and applied more consistently, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Friday.

"We need to be able now to prevent a crisis. And that means ... simplifying the Stability and Growth Pact to promote stronger and more systematic enforcement of fiscal rules," she said in a speech in Vienna.

"It would help build support for greater risk sharing, as we are advocating as well, and it would certainly be even-handed as far as the big ones (countries), the small ones," Lagarde said.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Louise Ireland)