Why the Netherlands Moved More Than $10bn of Gold From North America to London

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PublishedSeptember 3, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

Gold bars are seen at the United States West Point Mint facility in West Point, New York [File: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]

The Netherlands has shifted more than $10 billion worth of gold reserves away from storage locations in the United States and Canada and increased the proportion held in London, with the Dutch central bank saying the move is intended to make its reserves more accessible and strengthen the country’s preparedness for severe financial or geopolitical crises. De

The relocation by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) has attracted attention because it comes amid heightened tensions between the United States and several of its allies, as well as broader concerns among governments about the security and accessibility of sovereign reserves held abroad.

DNB announced the relocation on Wednesday and said the decision was driven primarily by risk diversification and crisis preparedness. The central bank did not identify a particular crisis that prompted the move, but said it wanted its gold to be in locations where it could be traded more easily if conventional financial systems were disrupted.

DNB President Olaf Sleijpen said the relocation had improved the tradability of the country’s gold holdings while stressing that the Netherlands did not expect to need to deploy the reserves under normal circumstances.

“With this relocation, we have improved the tradability of our gold reserves. We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,” Sleijpen said.

The Netherlands holds 612.4 tonnes of gold, valued at approximately €72.2 billion, or about $83.8 billion, according to the figures supplied. Gold is held by central banks as a reserve asset that can provide financial security during periods when normal monetary and financial systems face severe disruption.

The Dutch reserves are distributed among several locations rather than concentrated in a single facility. Before the latest relocation, DNB stored part of its holdings at its own Cash Centre in Zeist, while the remainder was held through central-bank facilities in London, New York and Ottawa.

The distribution has now changed substantially.

Before the relocation, approximately 30.8 percent of Dutch gold reserves were held in Zeist, 18.1 percent in London, 31.3 percent in New York and 19.7 percent in Ottawa.

Following the transfer, the proportion stored in Zeist remains at 30.8 percent, while London’s share has risen to 32.1 percent. The proportion held in New York has fallen to 18.5 percent, with Ottawa also accounting for 18.5 percent.

The result is a more evenly distributed geographical arrangement, with the United States and Canada now holding equal proportions of the Dutch reserves.

DNB said the gold involved in the relocation was valued at about €10.11 billion, equivalent to $11.73 billion, at the end of 2025. By 3pm local time on Wednesday, the estimated value had risen to approximately €10.34 billion, or about $12 billion, reflecting changes in the market value of gold.

The transfer was not carried out through a single method. DNB combined transactions in the gold market with the physical movement of bullion between storage locations.

The central bank initially sold approximately 59 tonnes of gold held in New York, valued at about $8.3 billion based on the December 2025 valuation. It then purchased gold in London.

DNB also physically transferred more than 27 tonnes of gold, valued at approximately $3.84 billion, from facilities in the United States and Canada to Zeist.

A comparable amount of gold that met international market standards was subsequently moved from Zeist to London. DNB said this approach avoided having to melt down and recast the bars simply to move them between locations.

Using December 2025 valuations, approximately $10.7 billion in gold was moved out of New York, while slightly more than $1 billion was shifted from Ottawa.

The physical movement and financial transactions were designed to produce the new geographical distribution without unnecessarily exposing the central bank to the operational risks associated with a large-scale bullion transfer.

DNB said combining the two methods was itself part of its risk-management strategy.

“Combining the processes of buying and selling and physical transport has allowed DNB to spread the risks associated with such a complex physical gold relocation operation, while also ensuring efficiency and cost-consciousness,” the bank said.

The central bank added that experience gained from using both approaches could prove valuable during a future emergency.

If another relocation became necessary during a crisis, DNB said circumstances could make one method impossible or impractical. Having experience with both financial transactions and physical transfers would therefore provide greater flexibility.

The decision forms part of a wider effort by the Dutch central bank to strengthen its crisis preparedness.

The question that has generated the greatest interest, however, is why DNB chose to increase the amount of gold held in London while reducing its holdings in New York and Ottawa.

The central bank’s own explanation focuses on accessibility rather than an explicit political disagreement with Washington or Ottawa.

DNB considers London an important international gold-trading centre and said holding a larger proportion of its reserves there strengthens the role of gold as an asset that can be mobilised during extreme financial stress.

“Keeping a larger share of the gold reserves in London strengthens the function of gold as an anchor of trust,” DNB said.

The bank described gold as the “ultimate reserve asset” because of its ability to provide protection against extreme systemic risks.

DNB also said gold stored in New York and Ottawa cannot be used as quickly and directly in such circumstances.

The central bank has not publicly specified what it means by the systemic risks it is seeking to hedge against. It has instead presented the relocation as part of a standard resilience and diversification strategy.

That explanation has not prevented analysts from considering whether the wider political environment may have influenced the choice of storage locations.

The Netherlands’ decision comes during a period of considerable tension across the transatlantic relationship. The United States has been involved in major trade disputes with Canada and has pursued an increasingly confrontational foreign-policy agenda during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Those developments do not establish that the Dutch relocation was undertaken because of a loss of confidence in the United States. DNB itself has not made such a claim. However, analysts have suggested that central banks could be reconsidering how much of their reserves they hold in foreign jurisdictions when geopolitical relationships become less predictable.

Laurent Schwartz, president of the Paris-based National Gold Counter, told the Guardian that the political circumstances in the United States could influence some central banks’ decisions about where their reserves are stored.

The United States and Canada have been engaged in a significant trade dispute since 2025. Washington imposed tariffs on important Canadian sectors, including steel, aluminium and automobiles, while Ottawa responded with retaliatory measures.

According to the supplied account, the dispute intensified in August when Washington imposed an additional 50 percent tariff on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods following unsuccessful trade negotiations.

Canada subsequently announced retaliatory tariffs covering more than 700 US products, also valued at approximately $20 billion. Those measures were scheduled to take effect on September 8, with tariffs ranging from 15 percent to 50 percent.

The Netherlands’ movement of gold therefore comes against a backdrop in which two of the locations previously used for its reserves are located in countries involved in an increasingly contentious economic relationship.

The broader geopolitical environment has also contributed to questions about whether European governments are reassessing their exposure to US financial infrastructure.

The United States’ military actions abroad have generated disagreements with some European governments, while Trump’s administration has expressed frustration over the reluctance of several European countries to participate in US-led military initiatives.

The supplied account points to the US-Israel war on Iran and increased American military activity around Cuba as examples of the foreign-policy tensions that have developed during Trump’s second term.

It also references the dramatic US operation in Venezuela in January, when US forces abducted then-President Nicolas Maduro and transported him to the United States to face drugs-and-guns charges. Since then, Washington has reached agreements giving it control over a substantial portion of Venezuela’s oil industry.

These developments form part of the wider geopolitical backdrop surrounding the Dutch gold decision, although DNB has not said that any of these events directly influenced its relocation.

Relations between Washington and European governments have also been strained by disagreements over energy policy, trade and military involvement.

The tensions were particularly visible during disagreements surrounding the conflict involving Iran. Trump criticised European countries that declined to participate in the war and, according to the supplied account, urged countries experiencing fuel shortages linked to disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz to purchase US oil instead.

The dispute followed decisions by several European governments concerning the use of their territory and airspace for military operations. France barred Israeli aircraft carrying weapons from using its airspace, Italy refused permission for US bombers to land in Sicily, and Spain refused US access to its bases and airspace for the war. Britain permitted US use of its bases while then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the UK would not participate directly in the conflict.

Trump subsequently said the UK-US relationship was “obviously not what it was”.

Again, none of these developments has been identified by DNB as the reason for its gold relocation. They nevertheless provide context for analysts who believe geopolitical uncertainty could influence how central banks manage assets stored outside their own borders.

Another development frequently cited in discussions about reserve security is the freezing of Russian sovereign assets following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The European Union froze approximately $300 billion in Russian central-bank assets in February 2022, representing around half of Russia’s total reserves of approximately $640 billion.

The action was unusual in scale and significance. Although governments have long possessed the ability to freeze foreign assets held within their jurisdictions, the freezing of such a large portion of a major country’s sovereign reserves represented a significant departure from previous expectations surrounding the protection of central-bank assets.

The issue developed further in 2024 when the European Union and G7 countries agreed to establish a mechanism using profits generated by the frozen Russian assets to support a $50 billion loan package for Ukraine.

In December 2025, the European bloc agreed to make the freezing of Russian sovereign assets indefinite, removing the requirement for the measure to be renewed every six months.

That sequence of decisions has contributed to wider discussions about the risks countries face when substantial national reserves are held under the jurisdiction of another government.

For central banks, the issue is not necessarily whether another country is currently considered trustworthy. It can also involve questions about whether assets can be accessed rapidly during a crisis and whether geopolitical developments could affect that access.

DNB’s emphasis on tradability fits into that calculation. Gold is unusual among reserve assets because it does not depend on the creditworthiness of a private borrower or issuer, but its practical usefulness during a crisis can still depend on where the bullion is stored and how quickly it can be mobilised.

The Netherlands is not the first country to reconsider the location of its gold holdings.

In January, Banque de France moved 129 tonnes of gold, worth approximately $17 billion, that had been held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since July 2025 back to France.

The French central bank cited a technical upgrade and the prospect of obtaining a better return as reasons for the move. It used a process similar to one employed by DNB, selling gold in New York and purchasing gold bars in Paris rather than physically transporting every bar.

Germany has also previously repatriated a substantial quantity of its gold.

Between 2013 and 2017, Germany moved more than 600 tonnes of gold from New York to Frankfurt. The German authorities said the move was intended to strengthen the security of the country’s national reserves.

At approximately $77.5 billion based on the valuation supplied, the German transfer was considerably larger in volume than the recent Dutch operation.

The Netherlands’ decision should therefore be viewed within a broader history of central banks adjusting the geographical distribution of their bullion.

What distinguishes the latest Dutch move is its timing and the direction of the transfer. Rather than simply bringing the gold back to the Netherlands, DNB has increased London’s share while reducing the proportions held in North America.

London is one of the world’s major centres for gold trading, and DNB has specifically linked the larger London holding to its objective of keeping its reserves readily tradable.

The new distribution also means that no single foreign location holds an overwhelmingly large proportion of Dutch gold. New York’s share has fallen from 31.3 percent to 18.5 percent, while Ottawa’s has declined from 19.7 percent to the same 18.5 percent level.

London, meanwhile, has increased from 18.1 percent to 32.1 percent, while Zeist remains at 30.8 percent.

The restructuring therefore represents both a reduction in the concentration of Dutch gold in North America and an increase in the amount stored in Europe’s principal gold-trading hub.

DNB’s official position remains that the exercise is fundamentally about resilience, diversification, efficiency and the ability to access gold during a severe crisis.

The central bank has not accused the United States or Canada of posing a specific threat to Dutch reserves, nor has it said that the relocation was a political protest against either government.

Nevertheless, the move has prompted wider questions about whether geopolitical instability is changing how countries think about the custody of their national wealth.

The freezing of foreign sovereign reserves, trade disputes between major economies and increasingly unpredictable diplomatic relationships have all encouraged governments to consider not only how much reserve wealth they hold, but also where it is physically located and how quickly it can be accessed.

For the Netherlands, the answer has been to redistribute approximately €10 billion-plus worth of gold between North American and European locations while retaining a substantial domestic holding.

DNB now has 30.8 percent of its gold in Zeist, 32.1 percent in London, 18.5 percent in New York and 18.5 percent in Ottawa.

The arrangement gives the Dutch central bank a more balanced geographical spread while increasing its exposure to London’s highly liquid gold market.

Whether the move represents nothing more than prudent reserve management or also reflects deeper concerns about the future of transatlantic relations cannot be established from DNB’s public explanation.

What is clear is that the Netherlands considers the ability to access and trade its gold during an extreme crisis important enough to justify a major restructuring of where those reserves are held.

For DNB, the stated objective is preparedness: maintaining gold as a reliable reserve asset, diversifying operational risks and ensuring that the Netherlands can mobilise its national wealth when ordinary financial mechanisms may be under severe strain.

The relocation consequently offers a window into how central banks are reassessing reserve management in an increasingly uncertain geopolitical environment, even when they stop short of explicitly linking individual decisions to political disputes.