MS Word Field Codes IF Statement Date Comparison

I am trying to compare two dates in MS Word using Field codes and mailmerge, but no matter what my input is I always receive the false statement as the answer. Below is a snippet of my code. Could anyone tell me what I am doing wrong? I used Ctrl+F9 for the braces and all my IF statements and fields are selcted from the Insert toolbar. Nothing is handtyped except the "a" and "b"

{IF {MERGEFIELD my_date @"d/MM/yyyy" } > { DATE @ "d/MM/yyyy" } "a" "b"}

Thanks in advance.