Google-sheets – Date comparison and DATEVALUE with dd.mm.YYYY. date format

I'm using the custom date format for one of my columns, dd.mm.YYYY.. I want to compare that date to TODAY(), by using

+AND($D2 < TODAY())

where column D is the one with the dates in dd.mm.YYYY. format.

However, this comparison doesn't seem to be working the way I expect it to, because it returns FALSE for 07.06.2018 (the seventh of June).

Googling offered DATEVALUE in the way of solving my problem. So, I changed the test (spaces added here, for readability) to

+AND(DATEVALUE($D2) < TODAY())

This doesn't work as well, Google Sheets returns

#VALUE Error - DATEVALUE parameter '01.01.2018' cannot be parsed to date/time.

Finally, my question.

How can I compare the date in custom format with today's date? I want to do this without resorting to the use of substrings and casting parts of the date to integers.