Germany undermined European efforts to maintain a coordinated response to the financial crisis in Greece and to market regulation more widely this week when it took unilateral action to clamp down on short-selling.

The country’s financial regulator, BaFin, surprised other regulators when it announced a ban on “naked” short-selling transactions in government euro-zone bonds and a select list of leading German financial shares.

Naked sales are those where traders commit to selling a security that they don’t yet own or don’t have an arrangement to buy if needed to cover a deal. The trade makes money if the value of the security falls.

The BaFin ban also prohibited trading in some credit default swaps, which speculators have used to bet on currency falls. The restrictions run until March next year.

The ban led to renewed calls for financial regulation to be coordinated at a European level, so that member countries couldn’t take such unilateral action. And the European Centre for International Political Economy, a think tank, said the German move ran contrary to the founding principles of the European Union.

Europe is working on creating a “super-regulator” to deal with high-level issues in the financial sector, with action expected this year.

The Committee of European Securities Regulators, which advises the European Commission on regulation, said it was considering whether the German move required its members to take action to shore up market confidence. It issued a briefing note setting out what market regulations say about short-selling in the European Union’s 27 member states.

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