A political dispute between Rome and Brussels is flaring up once again, this time over gold. Not metaphorically, but literally.

The clash was sparked by a proposed amendment to Italy’s budget law stating that the gold reserves held by the Bank of Italy “belong to the State, in the name of the Italian people.” The wording may sound harmless, even redundant, but it immediately raised alarms at the European Central Bank.

Italy holds 2,452 tonnes of gold - the third-largest reserve in the world after the United States and Germany. At book value, this amounts to just under €200 billion. At current market prices, it is closer to €280 billion - roughly the size of Italy’s entire EU recovery plan.

The amendment would not change how the reserves are currently managed. But politically, it sends a powerful message. Bank of Italy is independent from government control, and its gold is not meant to finance public spending. It exists as a safeguard against extreme crises, not as a financial resource to be tapped when budgets are tight.

The deeper issue is European. When Italy joined the euro, it gave up monetary sovereignty. National central banks became part of a single system, coordinated by the ECB. Gold reserves now serve the stability of the euro itself, not just individual countries.

EU treaties strictly forbid governments from using central bank assets to fund public spending. Giving political authority over gold reserves could be interpreted as a workaround to that rule — even if no immediate action is planned.

In its official opinion sent on December 2, the ECB questioned the true purpose of the amendment, warning that it could undermine the independence of Italy’s central bank. The language used - “belongs to the State” - departs from EU legal terminology, which speaks instead of the right to “manage” reserves strictly for monetary policy purposes.

What looks like a technical detail is therefore anything but. This is a deeper confrontation between national political narratives and the legal architecture of the eurozone.