Legislative Harmonization of Brazilian Data Protection Law with EU GDPR: A Comparative Study on the EU GDPR and Brazil's LGPD

Abstract

Recently, major countries and international organizations, including the European Union, are reforming their personal data protection system, which is understood to seek the reasonable balance between the protection of personal information and communication technologies that have developed rapidly over the past three decades. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enacted by the EU in May 2016, is the world's most powerful privacy system now, and since the GDPR was enacted, EU trade partners have been actively striving to align their own data protection legislations with the GDPR by adopting and amending theirs to meet the global data protection standards. Brazil, as Latin America's economic giant, has also spent a long time finding the balance point between creating economic profits and protecting human rights under the pressure of mediating the conflicting values of using and protecting personal information. As a result of the conflict, the Brazilian General Data Protection Regulation(LGPD), affected by the EU GDPR, was passed on August 15, 2018 after eight years of discussion. This study began with questions about how specific the Brazilian LGPD was influenced by the European GDPR and how these two legislations were harmonized in the global society. We examined the system and status of Brazil's personal information legislation, as well as the legislative progress of the new legislation, and went on to conduct comparative legal reviews of the two legislations to find out the similarities and differences between them. Furthermore, we looked at the implications of Brazilian legislation for our legislation and sought compatibility between the value of privacy protection and the development of information technology.