Ambiguities and legal implications of the gold standard
The provision raises questions about the ownership and ability of the central bank to freely dispose of them within the scope of its functions
The Budget Law for 2026 (Law No. 199 of 30.12.2025), in Article 1, paragraph 2, contains the rule on the gold reserves of the Bank of Italy, aimed at overcoming the concerns raised on the original proposal in two opinions by the ECB.
The original and distinctive feature of gold reserves, as a store of value with a circulation guarantee function, should be recalled here.
The BI has become part of the organisation in the broad sense of the state, albeit with a system that (first with the so-called divorce of 1981, which put an end to BI's obligation to purchase unsold government bonds on the primary market, and then with its integration into the European monetary system) preserves it from political interference, but also from its participants (whose share cannot exceed 5% of the capital). So much so that it has been argued that it identifies a strange pseudo-corporative model, in which the participants are not really its 'owners' (Paolo Ferri Luzzi), being the structure of its governance aimed at marking its independence, even after the interventions brought about by d.l. 133/2013 (conv. in l. 5/2014), on the revaluation of BI's capital.
Admittedly, this discipline is not free of criticism with regard to the guarantees aimed at ensuring the independence of the function with respect to the participants; however, in order to avert external interference in BI's assets, it would have been necessary to intervene on the faculties of the "owner of the capital" and not on the assets (and only on one in particular: the gold reserves), which constitute the assets of the institution. It should also be recalled that the international panorama, in the face of a generalised recognition of the principle of central bank autonomy, shows rather varied 'disciplines' and 'ownership situations' of central banks: institutional central banks (without an stricto iure owner), central banks owned by the state, by public institutions, by private individuals and even listed on the stock exchange (Belgium and Japan).
The provision opens the way to the interpretation that, ex adverso, BI's other reserves and assets, other than the gold reserves, as recorded in its balance sheet, are not referable as to their ultimate imputability (not even by way of "ownership") to the Italian People. It is also appropriate to point out that the "availability" of the reserves, id est the power to "dispose of" them, identifies a typically proprietary characteristic of the same (referable to Article 832 of the Civil Code) insofar as - as occurred at the time of the establishment of the SBC and the ECB - they can be disposed of by BI in the context of operations relating to the exercise of its functions, pursuant to and under the conditions of Article 31 of the SBC Statute.
