The 59th IEC General Meeting ,as held from 16-28 October, 1995 in Durban, South Africa.

The first recipients of the prestigious new IEC Lord Kelvin Award, an inscribed gold medal, are Swede, Bjorn I.Folcker, and Americans, Edward R. Kelly and John M. Kinn. The medals were awarded by IEC President Dr. Hans Gissel before the assembled members of the Commission in Council during the 59th IEC General Meeting in Durban, South Africa.

The IEC Council decided to dissolve the IEC Policy Group on Conformity Assessment (PCA) effective from 1 January, 1996. An executive committee drawn from the twelve countries who are currently members of the committee of action was set up to carry out conformity assessment activities. IEC Vice-President Flanders was appointed as Chairman of the Conformity Assessment Executive Committee.

Dr. Clif Johnston (South Africa) was elected as, Vice- President of the IEC, for a three-year term of office, from 1 January, 1996 - 31 December, 1998.

Council paid tribute to Prof. Jan-Louis De Kroes for his outstanding contribution to IEC work for more than 30 years. Prof. De Kroes is a Vice-President of IEC whose term of appointment expires at the end of 1995.

IEC prepared to participate in the ISO/IEC QSAR Programme as far as possible under the following conditions :

(i) the proposed ISO/IEC/IAF MOU is acceptable to IEC;
(ii) there should be an equal balance of membership of the QSAR Board between IEC and ISO; and
(iii) all EC Conformity Assessment Schemes embodying ISO 9100-1 & ISO 9000-2 as a governing document (i.e. IECO, CB-FCS and IECEx Scheme) should each be represented on the QSAR Board.

Mr. Bernard Falk from United State will take over the Presidency of IEC from 1 January, 1996 from Dr. Hans Gissel who will assume the post of Immediate Past President.

The 60th IEC General Meeting will be held in Dresden, Germany from 9 to 20 September,1996. The Indian National Committee will be hosting the 61st IEC General Meeting in, New Delhi from 12 to 24 October, 1997. The Council has, accepted with applause the invitation from the United States National Committee to hold the 1998 IEC General Meeting in Houston (Texas) from 12 to 23 October, 1998. Council also took note of advance invitations by the Japanese National Committee to hold the 1999 IEC General Meeting and the Swedish National Committee to hold the 2000 IEC General Meeting in Stockholm.