La graduación de las infracciones en Chile bajo la nueva Ley n° 21.719: Una aproximación al Reglamento General de Protección de Datos (RGPD)

The aim of this analysis is to examine the implications of the reform of Chile’s personal data protection law in its effort to achieve regulatory alignment with European infringement standards. Through a dogmatic legal analysis with a comparative approach, the study contrasts the evolution of Law No. 19,628 and its recent amendment with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Spain’s Organic Law 3/2018. The results indicate that Law No. 21,719 strengthens data protection by design and by default, establishes a catalogue of graduated infringements, and introduces a new institutional framework through the creation of a Data Protection Agency. The Data Protection Officer (DPO) is identified as a strategic actor responsible for preventive management and the adoption of measures aimed at avoiding infringements of rights. This doctrinal contribution provides DPOs in Chile with essential elements for the design of infringement prevention programmes. It concludes that such programmes are not only a legal requirement but also a mechanism for the effective protection of individuals’ rights, and that their implementation enables controllers to adopt preventive actions that directly influence the grading of administrative sanctions within the new national regulatory framework.