A Very Personal View on the Role of the ILO

The article sketches the history, the structure and the function of the International Labour Organization (ILO). In the first part the focus is on trans-national standard setting. There not only the merits and specific problems, concerning in particular the implementation of transnational labour standards, are described but also the implications of the shift from hard law to soft law are discussed. The second part is devoted to technical cooperation. Here the author’s own experiences serve as illustration of the big variety of such cooperation. It can be shown that successful technical cooperation is a precondition for successful standard setting.