A Programme of Cooperation between the two partners is being finalized. It is premised on a common understanding of present social issues, pressing social needs and priorities to address these needs.

On the side of the ILO, the review of the ILO's activities in the Russian Federation took the form of close cooperation between the Office in Moscow, the Multidisciplinary Ad-visory Team for Central and Eastern Europe in Budapest, and technical departments at the Geneva Head-quarters.

The most important event in the review process was a workshop near Moscow on 1-2 February 1995. The Russian side was represented by altogether 35 officials from the President's Office, four Federal Minis-tries and various other governmental organizations, employers' organi-zations, trade unions, the Consti-tutional Court, the Parliament, the Tripartite Commission, the National Training Foundation and research institutions.

On the part of the ILO, the workshop was attended by the directors of the Regional Office for Europe and the Office in Moscow, the entire Team in Budapest and representatives from those technical departments in Geneva that are not represented in the ILO-CEET.

At the meeting there was agreement that the ILO could best help Russia through concrete measures and actions, ranging from advice in the areas of legislation and policy formulation, and the training of policy makers and administrators, to assistance in the capacity building of the government, and employers' and workers' organizations, the provision of ILO publications and material and the translation of such material into Russian, and the exposure of the Russian groups to foreign experience and practices in various technical fields .

The ILO was assured by all members of its Russian constituency that it had their full confidence and would be regarded as an important partner on the road of transition to a market economy.

In the first months of this year some important ILO meetings have already taken place in Russia. They included seminars for trade unions on policies towards privatization, for employers on corporate bankruptcy, for all three constituents on Social Dialogue and tripartite consultation, and for social actors in the Ivanovo Oblast on industrial restructuring. WS.