The situation is fairly similar in the other direction, with around € billion from US firms being invested in the euro area, principally in the services industries of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The current levels of FDI flows show that these bilateral links will continue to strengthen in the future.
Portfolio investments from the euro area to the United States are also of an impressive magnitude. The stock of US portfolio assets held by the euro area reached  2  BIS Review 146/2007  almost € trillion last year, this being about a third of European holdings worldwide.