The Dutch central bank says it has moved 86 tonnes of its gold reserves out of the US and Canada to London, citing “increasing geopolitical unrest”.

De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) said gold reserves held in London could be traded more easily than those held in New York and Ottawa.

“This makes it the quickest for DNB to deploy in a crisis situation,” the bank said in a statement on Wednesday.

“With this step, we have improved the deployability of the gold reserves. We assume that we will never need to deploy the gold, but it is nevertheless necessary to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,” said DNB’s president, Olaf Sleijpen.

The total Dutch gold stock amounted to 612.4 tonnes and was valued at USD 83.7 billion at the end of 2025, said the DNB.

Before the deployment, the Dutch bank held 31.3 percent of its gold in New York and 19.7 percent in Ottawa.

This follows a decision by the French national bank to transfer its final 129 tons of gold from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to Paris between 2025 and 2026. It underlines a growing focus among European banks on keeping more bullion either at home or within major European trading centres rather than relying as heavily on vaults across the Atlantic.

In a statement the bank said: “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.”