The direct foreign investments international flows between the years of 1980-2000 have become more and more important components of the international economic circuit, recording an exponential growth. After a maximum in the year 2000 the foreign investment inflows have seen a fall in the years of 2001, 2002 and 2003, the situation recuperated in the last years. The evolution of the foreign direct investment inflows and outflows was different on the three categories of countries pointed out statistically by UNCTAD and we want to analyze exactly the elements that determined these tendencies in this paper.