CADE head questions whether there are enough resources to support a a new digital markets superintendence.
Brazil’s competition authority should take a measured approach to establishing a new digital markets superintendence, the authority's president told MLex, warning against moving too quickly in defining the unit’s structure and mandate.
Speaking about the bill under discussion in Congress to create it, Gustavo Augusto Freitas de Lima, president of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense of Brazil (CADE), raised a series of practical and institutional concerns about how such a unit would be implemented, emphasizing that an unplanned expansion could strain CADE’s existing resources.
The proposal to create a specialized digital markets superintendence has been promoted as part of Brazil’s effort to enhance oversight of the digital economy, mirroring initiatives in the European Union and other jurisdictions. But de Lima said the current bill is lacking in critical details, particularly those concerning funding, staffing and organizational design.
“The bill doesn’t present a budget source or indicate where the positions would come from. There’s no financial impact study,” he noted. “It’s very difficult to create a new superintendence on paper alone.”
De Lima questioned how CADE could accommodate the new body in practice, given the agency’s current space and budget constraints.
“Let’s say we create a new superintendence — will it fit in the CADE building? Maybe we’ll have to move the headquarters because of that. Where will I put 100 or 150 more people? How much budget will we need?”
he said.
Rather than building a new superintendence from scratch, de Lima suggested CADE gradually integrate digital oversight within its existing structure. One option under consideration would be to start with a dedicated coordination unit, allowing the authority to test how much specialization is truly required before making larger institutional changes.
“Maybe it makes sense to simply adapt CADE’s structure and start slowly, perhaps beginning with a coordination unit,” he explained. “We’ll test, assess the need and, if necessary, expand. That may not be the case — we may conclude that CADE’s structure works well or perhaps it just needs a small reshuffle.”
The agency has already increased its workforce modestly, de Lima noted, welcoming nine new professionals through a recent public competition and bringing total staffing close to 600 employees.
“Perhaps it’s better for us to readjust within our culture, think about what we can use and start slowly implementing it,”
he said.
De Lima’s comments reflect a broader concern about institutional overstretch at a time when many competition authorities worldwide are grappling with how best to regulate fast-evolving digital markets. While policymakers are eager to strengthen enforcement tools in response to the market power of major technology companies, de Lima emphasized that structural ambition must be matched by administrative capacity.
De Lima underscored that any transfer of powers related to digital market oversight occur gradually and in consultation with Congress.
The Brazilian government introduced a bill in Congress last month aimed at reforming the country’s competition law and establishing an ex-ante regulatory framework for digital markets that in many ways mimics the features of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).
As Brazil’s Congress debates the bill, de Lima’s cautionary stance may weigh on the legislative process, signaling that while CADE supports modernizing its framework for digital oversight, it seeks to do so in a way that is institutionally sound, budget-conscious and operationally realistic.
Source: MLex
