It was though, a fine was levied. There's flexibility in the punishments that are dished out in a lot of justice systems and I suspect it's to take into account that the law is not really nuanced. It's hard to write down /all/ possible motives, reasons or contexts in which a law or rule has been broken, and allowing the punishment to be scaled based on judgement seems like a reasonable thing to allow. I guess that's what judges are for.
Of course this raises questions around who is making these judgements, and there's sometimes unfairness in how they are applied (eg. police in the US, broken tail lights and the colour of skin of the person stopped), but it doesn't mean that the underlying goal isn't sound, just the implementation.
Personally I've had experience of this. My car tax (UK) lapsed and I didn't renew it. An oversight during a busy time of my life (moving house), and one that I noticed and fixed independently once I noticed, it must have been after a month or two.
However, during the period when my car wasn't taxed the police noticed and reported it (to the authorities, not to me) who issued a fine (~£90) that was sent to me by post. Unfortunately though I'd told the authorities that I'd moved house, twice, they sent the fine and all followup correspondence to my old address and I ended up with a choice, pay debt collectors (they managed to find my new house /just fine/) for the now increased fine + expenses (in the region of ~£800) or go to court. Worst case either way was I'd have to pay the increased amount.
I went to court and the three justices deliberated my case (I could hear them) and though they decided that I could afford the increased amount, it wouldn't be in anyone's interest to levy it as the circumstances in which this happened mitigated my lack of attention to the increasing fines. I wasn't a deliberate law breaker and ultimately a large fine wasn't going to change my on consideration generally good behaviour, and they made me pay the original ~£90 rather than the substantially increased amount.
In France there are a lot of new laws every year (~100) but at least on third of them will not be enforced, mostly because there is no budget to implement them, or it is political gesticulation to please some electors [0].
For example over the year 2009/2010, 59 laws, which provided for 670 implementing decrees, were promulgated.
According to a Senate report, as of September 30, 2010, only 3 laws had received all of their implementing decrees. And only 20% of these decrees had seen the light of day. However, a law without an implementing decree is useless: it is not applicable.
Most laws are poorly enforced and only get invoked when you have otherwise pissed the right person off and they’re looking for something to get you on.
So what I said is true. "Up to" does not say anything about the typical amount.
Your fact check article is also only partially relevant as it addresses the sensationalist claim that these fines apply to killing a wasp but the conversation was about a wasps nest.
The article also states that these maximum fines exist but that even the very low fines that have been handed out only happen very rarely. In other words: the laws exist but they're applied so rarely as to be effectively meaningless (which is true not just for wasps but for animal cruelty in general). That doesn't disagree with what I said though.
That's almost worse imo.