Germany’s financial regulator BaFin plans to apply permanently ESMA’s CFD trading restrictions on a national level. The decision is intended as a protective measure for retail investors which will take effect in 2019. In its official notice the German financial watchdog clarified that it aims to “permanently match the level of protection in Germany to the temporary product intervention measure issued by ESMA.” This is partly done to prevent attempts to evade these measures by providers from other EU countries. Another reason is that the ESMA can only apply such product intervention measures on a temporary basis.