"the GDPR has the potential to escalate to those levels but in the spirit of the good natured enforcers ..."
The author seems to have the idea that bureaucratic EU systems are inherently "good" and that even if things look bad on paper, it will be fine because they are "good" people. This is not how the legal system or legal compliance works.
Yes, we shouldn't aim to give governments power to push things to an extreme, but on the other hand we should also ensure that they have the ability to actually react to serious abuses.
In particularly in the area of data protection, I don't know of a single example where the rules have been pushed to the extreme. If anything, as a private citizen I'm disappointed there's not been stricter enforcement. As someone who has had to deal with it on the corporate side as well, it's not been hard to comply with.
Enforcement here is generally always strongly predicated on not jumping straight to the strictest possible outcome, but in carefully considering how serious a transgression is. It's not that EU systems are inherently good, but that history and practice have shown that when they give flexibility, it takes serious abuses and ill intent to end up with the strictest reactions allowed, and there'd also be little reason to assume that anyone rushing to the strictest interpretations possible wouldn't get shut down hard by the courts.