The Dutch central bank, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), has moved 86 tonnes of gold reserves from the United States and Canada to London, citing "increasing geopolitical unrest" and the need to improve its ability to respond quickly in a crisis. The transfer, which took place between March and August this year, shifts a significant share of the Netherlands' holdings to the British capital, which the bank describes as a more liquid and accessible market for physical gold.

Before the move, the DNB held 31.3% of its gold in New York and 19.7% in Ottawa. Both now stand at 18.5%, while London's share has risen from 18.1% to 32.1%. The Netherlands retains 30.8% of its reserves on home soil. The total Dutch gold stock amounts to 612.4 tonnes, valued at around €72.2 billion ($83.7bn) at the end of 2025. The operation was carried out through a combination of buying and selling and physical transport — more than 27 tonnes were physically moved to Zeist, a town in the central Netherlands, before being shipped to London, a method designed to avoid melting down gold bars and to spread the risks of moving large quantities.

The DNB has previously expressed concern about Europe's increasingly strained relationship with the United States since the return of President Donald Trump, warning that dependence on US financial infrastructure poses risks. London's gold market, the world's deepest and most liquid, allows central banks to lend or sell gold more readily than vaults in New York or Ottawa. "This makes it the quickest for DNB to deploy in a crisis situation," the bank said.

Analysts note that central banks have been quietly repositioning their gold holdings for about a decade, a trend that may be accelerating. Laurent Schwartz, president of the Paris-based National Gold Counter, said the current US political climate could push more central banks toward alternative storage locations. John Plassard, an analyst at Cite Gestion Private Bank, described the Dutch move as aimed at ensuring "more immediate availability in the event of a crisis," but cautioned that if other major central banks followed suit, it could undermine confidence in the US as a custodian of foreign reserves.

For now, the move appears to be an outlier among large European economies. Germany's Bundesbank, which faced similar public pressure earlier this year over the security of its New York holdings, has opted to keep its reserves in place, reaffirming that the New York Federal Reserve "is and remains an important storage site" for its gold. The Dutch decision nonetheless signals a broader rethinking of financial resilience in an era of heightened geopolitical tension.