Brazil's Other Platform Bill Just Moved

Most of the debate has been focused on the government's PL 4675. Meanwhile, a rewrite of the older PL 2768 advanced in the House. The two bills aim at the same target and take opposite routes to reach it.

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The debate on platform competition in Brazil has had one main character. PL 4675/2025, the bill the federal government sent to Congress was treated as the proposal that would define the country's approach.

It is not the only one. PL 2768/2022 ^[1], first introduced in 2022 by Deputy João Maia, never left the table, and in May 2026 it moved. The rapporteur at the House's Economic Development Committee, Deputy Any Ortiz, presented a substitute text that keeps the old bill number and rewrites almost everything around it. Brazil now has a second, fully formed model for the same problem, and on most of the questions that matter it points in the opposite direction from PL 4675/2025.

The original PL 2768/2022 read like classic sector regulation. It handed the job to ANATEL, the national telecommunications agency, organized itself around platforms holding what it called “essential access control power”, set a revenue trigger of R$70 million earned in Brazil, listed eight categories of platform, and created a supervision fund financed by a 2 percent levy. The substitute text keeps the number and little else.

A change of address and of language 

The most visible shift is institutional. ANATEL is out. The substitute text routes everything to CADE, the competition authority, and specifically to its existing General Superintendence. No new agency, no new unit, no new fund. 

The conceptual vocabulary moves with it. “Essential access control power” gives way to “dominant position in a relevant market in the digital economy”. The choice of label is deliberate. Instead of inventing a sui generis status for large platforms, the draft anchors designation in the language Brazilian competition law already uses. 

How a platform gets designated

Designation is not automatic and does not follow from size alone. Under the substitute text, a platform can be designated only after a full administrative process, and only if it meets two conditions at once. It has to satisfy the dominant-position test of the competition law (Law 12.529/2011), and it has to be an indispensable intermediary for professional users or other platforms trying to reach end users.

The process starts with a complaint filed by professional users or rival platforms, rather than with a regulator acting on its own initiative across the board. The General Superintendence screens the complaint, may open an inquiry, and eventually sends a technical report to CADE's Tribunal, which has 60 days to decide. The rapporteur frames the whole sequence as a fast track, with a ceiling of 245 days from complaint to conclusion.

Remedies, not a rulebook

Here the substitute text departs sharply from the menu-of-obligations model. It contains no catalogue of duties. Instead, for each designated platform, CADE specifies the particular uses and the specific conducts that must be stopped or modified. Obligations are tailored to the case rather than drawn from a fixed list.

The cease-and-desist commitment, known by its Portuguese acronym TCC, sits at the center of the design. A platform can offer one at the Superintendence stage, during a negotiation window, or later before the Tribunal. Once accepted, it can close the process without the platform ever being designated.

A two-year clock

Designation, and the conduct remedies attached to it, last two years. They can be extended once, for another two, by the Tribunal. The rapporteur's stated reason is to avoid locking dependent businesses into permanent reliance on a dominant platform. She draws an explicit analogy to fixed telephony, where open-ended access rules, in her account, discouraged entrants from investing in their own infrastructure.

Keeping a distance from Brussels

The rapporteur is explicit about the EU’s Digital Markets Act. Her report cites foreign experts who flagged the rigidity of the DMA’s ex-ante model and its absolute prohibitions, and argues for case-by-case assessment instead. The substitute text presents itself as not bound to the ex-ante versus ex-post dichotomy. It is ex-post in its trigger, since everything begins with a complaint about a concrete problem, yet fast-tracked to avoid the long timelines typical of Brazilian conduct cases.

Two bills, one problem

The contrast with PL 4675/2025 runs through every pillar above. Both bills lean on the same competition statute and both end up at CADE, yet they answer almost every design question differently.

Topic	Substitute text (PL 2768/2022)	PL 4675/2025
Legislative vehicle	Autonomous law that applies the competition statute, Law 12.529/2011, only supplementarily	Direct amendment to the competition statute, inserting new articles into it
Supervising body	CADE's existing General Superintendence, with no new structure created	A new unit inside CADE, the Superintendence of Digital Markets, with its own Senate-confirmed head
Key concept	“Dominant position in a relevant market in the digital economy”, anchored in traditional antitrust language	“Economic agent of systemic relevance in digital markets”, a status-based category
Designation criteria	Cumulative qualitative test, the dominant-position test of the competition law plus being an indispensable intermediary. No revenue figure	Qualitative criteria such as network effects, vertical integration, data access, and user base, applied non-cumulatively, plus a revenue gate of R$50bn global or R$5bn in Brazil
What triggers a case	Only a complaint from professional users or rival platforms. No broad initiative by the regulator	The Superintendence may act on its own initiative or on a complaint, and certain public bodies can force an immediate, binding start
Obligations imposed	No catalogue. CADE specifies which conducts must stop or change in each case	An exemplificative menu of special obligations set by the Tribunal, including interoperability, data portability, and no self-preferencing
Negotiated exit	The cease-and-desist commitment (TCC) is central, available at several stages, and can close the case without designation	No equivalent negotiated-commitment mechanism built into the designation and obligations process
Designation term	2 years, extendable once for another 2	Up to 10 years, renewable
Process timeline	Fast track, with a stated ceiling of 245 days from complaint to decision	About 180 days at the Superintendence before automatic referral, then Tribunal phases of up to 120 days
Stance toward the DMA	Explicit critique of the ex-ante model and its rigidity, favoring case-by-case assessment	Alignment, presented as joining a regulatory vanguard alongside Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom

What to watch

The substitute text still has to clear the Economic Development Committee and the other committees the original bill was referred to. Should it advance, Congress will hold two parallel models for the same question, one from the Executive and one from the House. Whether they converge, compete, or merge is the next chapter of a debate that began, quietly, in 2022.

References

[1] HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. Bill No. 2768/2022. Available at: https://www.camara.leg.br/proposicoesWeb/fichadetramitacao?idProposicao=2337417. Access on May 20, 2026.