Do you know what is done with the money from these fines? Does it merely fund the enforcement teams (seems excessive), or is it put into some EU “general fund”?

FB has a global revenue of ~$86B. Of which 4% is $3.44B. That would make a real mark on the budgets of the poorer half of EU countries.

I wonder why there aren't more enforcement actions...

It's a simple math - how many people are responsible for processing such case? 10-100? So let's say it is 100 people. You only need like 100,000,000 EUR to make it go away by giving each one a 1M. Even if those people go for early retirement and new staff takes on the case, you can repeat this. Even if it happens every year you can do it for 34 years before the money exceeds the potential fine and meanwhile you'll make much more money as it gets pushed back. In reality you probably need to buy top 5-10 people so they can keep pushing it back while being set for life.

This doesn't answer the question "does the money just sit in an escrow account forever or is it eventually spent somehow?"

Generally they go into the coffers of the treasury of the country that issued the fine. This may be further directed to the EU but probably not.

That's an interesting question. I do not know the answer.

Some companies will never learn. Search for Vodafone, for example.

Wonderful, thanks!

Now we are talking :-)

A drop in the ocean.

Indeed. The regulation allows for pretty stiff fines I believe, so with fines this small for companies whose entire business model is persanal data (e.g. Google and Facebook but not an airline or retail chain) the math should be "How large should the fine be in order for it to cost MORE for this company, than actually complying".

Complying with the GDPR isn't "free". It's like these companies belive "oh we can't possibly comply with that because it would hurt our bottom line!".

Give it some time. H&M got a €35mio fine in November 2020 for a document from 2014 stored in a network drive that contained employees personal data. If you do not comply, the more you wait the more risky that becomes.