There are competing incentives. Governments/politicians want to make it easy for companies to comply in order to encourage economic investment, and also to gain

There are competing incentives. Governments/politicians want to make it easy for companies to comply in order to encourage economic investment, and also to gain goodwill among their voters. Legal institutions want to make things appear as complicated and uncertain as possible so that they make more money selling lawyers. The end result is that you get mixed messages, depending on where the information ultimately came from. I personally don't know how hard it actually is to comply with GDPR, but I know that it has to be easier than it's made out to be.