Brazil's Chamber of Deputies may vote on Tuesday 17 November 2026 on PL 4,675/2025, according to an analysis by CEA Digital Law. The rapporteur, Aliel Machado (PV-PR), announced the date. The vote is not confirmed on the Chamber's own bill page, and the bill still needs Senate approval and presidential assent. The question is whether a bill this significant should move on the current text.
The strongest case for the bill
The case for acting is serious. CADE's officials argue that case-by-case enforcement is too slow for markets that tip quickly. In a May 2026 Chamber hearing, a CADE representative cited a 2019 search-and-news case that took about seven years to reach a preliminary decision, according to Agência Câmara. The government also calls the bill "soft" compared with the European model. The bill has no content-moderation provisions. It is economic regulation of business conduct, which is a more defensible target than speech rules.
What the bill does
The federal executive submitted the bill on 18 September 2025. It amends Competition Law 12.529/2011. According to the Chamber's tracking record, it creates a Digital Markets Superintendency inside CADE and carries urgency status under Article 155 of the Chamber's rules. The urgency request was approved on 18 March 2026. CEA Digital Law reports the vote was 276 to 186.
The design runs in four steps, per Agência Câmara's description of the text:
- The Superintendency opens designation proceedings, and CADE's tribunal decides.
- Groups with gross revenue above R$50 billion globally or R$5 billion a year in Brazil can be designated, alongside qualitative factors such as the number of business and end users.
- Designation lasts up to ten years, can be renewed, and covers the entire economic group.
- Duties include no favouring of the platform's own offerings, free data-transfer tools, interoperability, and non-discriminatory access. Non-compliance draws a daily fine of R$20,000, which can rise to R$1 million.
The obligations can be revised through a new administrative process when markets change significantly.
Where proportionality is weakest
The trigger measures size, not market power. Revenue thresholds capture firms that may face intense competition in their specific services. A group could be designated because of one dominant product, then carry duties across unrelated businesses. A white paper from the International Center for Law & Economics (May 2026) makes this point. It recommends replacing "relevância sistêmica" with substantial market power and designating specific services rather than whole economic groups. It also suggests a designation period of three to five years instead of ten. These are reasonable changes, and they would not gut the bill. A tailored designation keeps the regulator's reach tied to the harm it is addressing.
Fixed duties lack an efficiencies route. Self-preferencing can foreclose rivals. It can also lower prices or improve integration for users, as when a platform bundles a map with a ride-hailing service. A ban that applies without any showing of harm, and that has no explicit efficiencies defence, shifts the burden onto the firm. The ICLE paper raises this concern about the bill's treatment of self-preferencing. A narrower approach would presume harm but let firms rebut the presumption with evidence.
The bill may duplicate existing tools. The ICLE authors argue that CADE already reached settlements with Apple and Google in December 2025 that address overlapping conduct. They say the existing competition law is therefore adequate for the conduct at issue. That position is contested, and the government's response is that ex-post cases take too long. But it matters for sequencing: if settlements are working, Brazil can afford to refine the text rather than rush it.
Impact analysis is disputed. At the May hearing, the industry group ALAI said a regulatory impact analysis found significant costs that could be passed to consumers, according to Agência Câmara. The ICLE paper says no such analysis preceded the bill's submission. Both claims cannot be right, and lawmakers should resolve the question before the floor vote. Publishing the analysis would settle it.
Process matters as much as substance
Urgency sent the bill directly to the floor with no committee review. As DPL News reported, ALAI opposed the urgency request on grounds that market failures were unproven and that the bill creates legal uncertainty. It also argued that the bill copies the EU's Digital Markets Act. The government disputes the copying claim. CGI.br has separately issued a technical note on how the bill handles multistakeholder participation at CADE. Skipping committees means the details above were never tested in the usual way.
What lawmakers should do
The Chamber should not vote down the concept. A regulator with a specialised unit, public hearings, tribunal-level decisions and revisable obligations is a defensible model. The bill is also less prescriptive than the EU approach. But three amendments would improve it before the Senate takes it up:
- Tie designation to substantial market power in identified services, not group-wide revenue alone.
- Add an efficiencies defence to the self-preferencing and interoperability duties.
- Shorten the default designation period and require a published impact assessment.
The Senate stage offers a second chance to make these changes. The Chamber can still improve the text before passing it. Whether it does so on 17 November is unconfirmed.