At its 60th meeting, on 23 April 1996, the Commission, taking into account its heavy schedule of work, as well as the need to give adequate consideration to all the items on the agenda, and recalling that in previous years the Economic and Social Council had approved the Commission's request for additional meetings for its thirty-seventh to fifty-second sessions, decided, without a vote:

• To recommend to the Economic and Social Council that it authorize, if possible within existing financial resources, 40 fully serviced additional meetings, including summary records, in accordance with rules 29 and 31 of the rules of procedure of the functional commissions of the Economic and Social Council, for the Commission's fifty-third session;
• To request the Chairman of the Commission at its fifty-third session to make every effort to organize the work of the session within the times normally allotted, so that the additional meetings that the Economic and Social Council might authorize would be utilized only if such meetings proved to be absolutely necessary.