Brazil’s data protection law to come into force in August

Brazil’s Senate has reinstated the original schedule for the introduction of the country’s new data protection act, despite having approved its postponement in April, with the introduction of the new law having been pushed back to May 2021.

Senator Antonio Anastasia (pictured) had presented bill No. 1179/2020 in April that established transitional and emergency rules for the regulation of laws relations during the COVID-19 pandemic, and which proposed extending the entry into force of the data protection law, known by its Portuguese acronym as LGPD, to January 1, 2021, with the application of sanctions for violation of the law applicable from August 2021.

However, the Senate has reviewed the measures implemented to counter the pandemic and overturned the postponement of the LGPD, which will now come into afect in August 2020 as planned, while sanctions for non-compliance will be enforced from August 2021 onwards.

President Jair Bolsonaro must now sign the revised amendment into law.

However, maintaining the original timeline for the law introduces legal uncertainty for businesses when it comes to compliance to the new rules, since procedures are not yet standardised and members of the National Data Protection Authority, which would be responsible for the enforcement of the rules, have yet to be appointed, according to local media reports.