A large number of multicriteria techniques have been developed to deal with different kinds of problems. Whereas each technique has pros and cons and can be more or less useful depending on the situation, few approaches were proposed to guide the selection of a technique adapted to a given situation. This paper presents a state of the art of the existing approaches for selecting MCDM techniques. The state of the art is structured with a framework that guides the analysis of each selection approach according to its own characteristics, and to the characteristics of the MCDM techniques that the approach helps to select. The state of the art has two outcomes: a comparative analysis of the presented approaches, and a collection of requirements for a "good" selection approach.