I made a test with GeoServer 2.16 standardsthat is installed from the bin-zip installer without changing the default settings by leaving out parameters from GetMap one by one.
A standard-compliant request
http://localhost:8080/geoserver/nurc/wms?SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.3.0&REQUEST=GetMap&FORMAT=image/jpeg&TRANSPARENT=true&LAYERS=nurc:Img_Sample&CRS=EPSG:4326&STYLES=&WIDTH=768&HEIGHT=372&BBOX=35.134,-101.370,39.221,-92.933
Result: valid output, no error. This is expected.
Request with styles missing
http://localhost:8080/geoserver/nurc/wms?SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.3.0&REQUEST=GetMap&FORMAT=image/jpeg&TRANSPARENT=true&LAYERS=nurc:Img_Sample&CRS=EPSG:4326&WIDTH=768&HEIGHT=372&BBOX=35.134,-101.370,39.221,-92.933
Result: valid output, no error. This is somewhat expected because the parameter was just a dummy &STYLES=
. Against the standard anyway.
Request with transparent missing
http://localhost:8080/geoserver/nurc/wms?SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.3.0&REQUEST=GetMap&FORMAT=image/jpeg&LAYERS=nurc:Img_Sample&CRS=EPSG:4326&STYLES=&WIDTH=768&HEIGHT=372&BBOX=35.134,-101.370,39.221,-92.933
Result: valid output, no error. This is expected because transparent
is not a mandatory parameter in WMS 1.3.0 GetMap. Inspire validator is wrong here.
Request with CRS missing
http://localhost:8080/geoserver/nurc/wms?SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.3.0&REQUEST=GetMap&FORMAT=image/jpeg&TRANSPARENT=true&LAYERS=nurc:Img_Sample&STYLES=&WIDTH=768&HEIGHT=372&BBOX=35.134,-101.370,39.221,-92.933
GeoServer does not give an error but it sends an empty output.
Request with version missing http://localhost:8080/geoserver/nurc/wms?SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap&FORMAT=image/jpeg&TRANSPARENT=true&LAYERS=nurc:Img_Sample&CRS=EPSG:4326&STYLES=&WIDTH=768&HEIGHT=372&BBOX=35.134,-101.370,39.221,-92.933
GeoServer does not give an error but it sends an empty output.
I would suggest to file a GeoServer bug about the "version" and "crs" cases. When it comes to "transparent" the bug is in the test. Styles may be a corner case and being lenient is understandable. In the strict CITE mode it should lead to an error.
I tried also to set WMS into the strict CITE mode but it did not change anything with my test requests, not even after restarting GeoServer.