Abstract. 2011 was a difficult year for all the countries, developed and emerging ones. For overcoming the negative effects of the financial crisis, many economies have established as purpose to adopt new economic policies regarding the foreign direct investment flows (FDI), even to stimulate the flows or to reduce it (protectionism measures). So, there can be identified two categories of national policies: measures for the FDI flows stimulation and measures whose aim was the weighting of FDI developing, through restriction and regulation. In the first category we could include the liberalization measures and promotional and faciletation policies. In this study we evidenced that the fundament of the second category of policies is the belief that the FDI outward lead to job exports, to a raise of unemployment and a weakness of the industrial base.

Many reports on FDI flows, here we talk about those made by UNCTAD, show that the regulation and restriction policies are seen as a possible protectionism, especially in the agricultural and extractive industries, where there have been required nationalization processes and divestments. Even more, the economies which adopted this kind of policies have been less interested in investing abroad, the outward of FDI being affected and globally the total outward decreased.

Keywords: national policies; foreign direct investments (FDI); liberalization measures; promotion and facilitation policies; restriction and regulation policy measures.