Germany faces mounting pressure to withdraw billions of euros in gold from US vaults amid heightened transatlantic tensions and an erratic administration in Washington.
Germany holds the second-largest gold reserves in the world after the US, of which around 164 billion euros (US$194.75 billion) or 1,236 tonnes is stored in New York. A growing clamour within Germany’s central bank and the Bundestag is pushing for that gold to be withdrawn, arguing it’s too risky to leave it in the US under the current administration, reports the Guardian.
“Given the current geopolitical situation, it seems risky to store so much gold in the US,” Emanuel Mönch, a leading economist and former head of research at the Bundesbank, told financial newspaper Handelsblatt. “In the interest of greater strategic independence from the US, the Bundesbank would therefore be well advised to consider repatriating the gold.”
A spokesperson for Friedrich Merz’s coalition government recently said that withdrawal was not under consideration, but Mönch is only the latest expert to advise repatriation.
[See more: Luxury jewellery brands gamble on raising prices as gold surges]
“Trump is unpredictable,” Michael Jäger, head of the European Taxpayers Association (TAE) as well as the Association of German Taxpayers, told the Rheinische Post. “That’s why our gold is no longer safe in the Fed’s vaults. What happens if the Greenland provocation continues? … The risk is increasing that the German Bundesbank will no longer be able to access its gold.”
Jäger said he had written last year to the Bundesbank and the finance ministry, urging them to “bring our gold home.”. More than half of Germany’s gold reserves currently sit in the Bundesbank, with the remainder in New York (37 percent) and London (12 percent), the global centre of gold trading.
Talk of repatriating German gold has previously been the purview of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), arguing for the return for patriotic reasons despite sending a large part of its gold assets to Lichtenstein last year. But as tensions grow with the US, even members of the opposition Greens have spoken out in favour of bringing the gold home, arguing the reserves are an “important anchor of stability and trust” which “must not become pawns in geopolitical disputes.”
