When is a fine not a fine?

Steve Gibson posed this question in a recent SecurityNow! podcast and you can read the show notes at https://grc.com/sn/sn-1064-notes.pdf.

It seems that the answer is when the fine is levied by the European Data Commission for EU GDPR infringements. Of the 4.04 billion euros levied in fines over the last 6 years, only 20 million euros have been collected. Even considering the fact that fines generally seem not to be enforced whilst an appeal is pending, that is still a huge amount of unpaid fines.