WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - Europe should consolidate its seats on the International Monetary Fund board, though scaling down to a single chair may not be the best plan, the head of the IMF's International Monetary and Financial Committee said on Saturday.

The discussion comes as the IMF tries to give developing economies a bigger voice. Europe has long debated consolidating its IMF votes, but has yet to decide how.

Europe currently controls eight of the IMF board's 24 seats. The United States has called for the IMF to reduce the size of its board to 22 by 2010, and to 20 by 2012, but does not want to remove seats held by developing countries. That leaves Europe as the logical choice to cut back.

"There is no need to have 27 countries deciding to go for one seat," said Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, the IMFC chairman. "Two of them (seats) could go, or three of them. Of course, the demonstrative effect of such a move would be immense."

Padoa-Schioppa said the change would not necessarily need to go through Brussels, the head of the European Union. Instead, it would require "two or three countries who are bold enough to make this move."

The matter has been a source of political controversy in Europe for years. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, said that when he was French finance minister a decade ago, he had agreed with his German counterpart to share a seat.

"For reasons I cannot confess ... the project collapsed," Strauss-Kahn said. "But the idea is still there."

Padoa-Schioppa agreed that the idea was still alive but added, "the reluctance is also there."

"It goes strongly against common sense to think that an area that has been capable of making a huge change of moving from many currencies to one, the simple corollary of having a single seat is so difficult to achieve," he said. "I think that sooner or later this contradiction will be corrected.

By consolidating its power in one seat, Europe could conceivably overtake the United States as the largest player in the IMF. Strauss-Kahn pointed out that such a change might mean a change of address for the Washington-based IMF. The fund's articles of agreement creating the fund stipulate that its headquarters must be in the country of the biggest shareholder, he noted.