50

The promotion of a country, a region or a city requires from the public administration in charge of the economic promotion to understand what are the needs of a company that wish to locate in a specific territory. This article identifies the main location criteria foreign investors are supposed to take into account in their location decision and the scores they give to these criteria, based on a study carried out on foreign companies located from one to five years in a specific region of Western Europe. The purpose is thus on the one hand, to provide a check-list to the foreign investors in order to help them comparing different location opportunities, and on the other hand, to provide a set of criteria on which the State may invest in order to meet foreign companies’ expectations and attract their investments.