In September 2026 the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, the DIHK, published 20 examples of Gold-Plating. The term means transposing EU directives into national law with requirements that go beyond what EU law demands. Among the DIHK’s examples is the German duty for companies to appoint a data protection officer. In December 2025 a study by the Centrum für Europäische Politik found that recent federal governments had hardly managed to avoid gold-plating, despite clear promises.