The President of Brazil signed Bill No. 2,628/2022 on Tuesday (17), establishing the Digital Child and Adolescent Statute (Digital ECA), creating Law No. 15,211 of September 17, 2025. This legislation represents a fundamental milestone for the protection of children and adolescents in the online environment and responds to a longstanding demand from Brazilian society. During its legislative process, the bill was the subject of extensive debates, public hearings, and consultations involving the National Congress, the Federal Government, civil society, academia, and the private sector.

To enable the implementation of the Digital ECA, three complementary measures were issued on the same day. Decree No. 12,622 designates ANPD (Brazil's National Data Protection Authority) as the autonomous administrative authority responsible for the protection of children and adolescents in digital environments. Provisional Measure No. 1,317 transforms the ANPD into a Regulatory Agency (now called the National Data Protection Agency), linked to the Ministry of Justice, granting it functional, technical, decision-making, administrative, and financial autonomy, as well as creating the Data Protection Regulation Specialist career track. Provisional Measure No. 1,319 establishes a six-month period for the legislation to take effect, following a veto of the original one-year timeline.

The ANPD already has significant experience in protecting children's and adolescents' personal data, a group recognized by LGPD (Brazil's General Data Protection Law) as vulnerable. In recent years, the Authority has prioritized enforcement actions targeting digital platforms, artificial intelligence systems, and facial recognition technologies, with 60% of its current enforcement activities involving the processing of minors' data. The organization has also included this topic as a priority on its Regulatory Agenda, conducted public consultations, and expanded inter-institutional and international cooperation, including partnerships with other regulatory authorities.

To adequately prepare for its new responsibilities, the ANPD established an internal working group responsible for analyzing the provisions of the Digital ECA and planning the execution of its new legal competencies. The transformation into a regulatory agency and the structural strengthening provide the ANPD with greater institutional capacity, technical robustness, and organizational stability.

Before the law was signed, the topic was also covered on the Segurança Legal podcast in episode 400 (listen here).

This post was summarized from its original version using AI, with human review.

Source: ANPD