The funny thing is that when the EU/EC was exactly that, politicians quite quickly realized that it wasnt fully working and they needed cohesion to develop the market further

I believe that was basically what Nigel Farage campaigned on when going for Brexit.

As did basically all Leavers in the public eye.

But as soon as they got what they wanted, it switched to "cut off the EU entirely and depend they don't exist". Disaster capitalists willing to trash the country and sell it out to their chums or hostile states, so long as they get a little cut out of it themselves.

Eh, do not hate on us or compare us to AfD just because we do not want to join the EU as full members. Our geography means we need tariffs to have a viable agricultural sector, which is important in times of crisis. We also have a lot of labour rights and stuff that is not compatible with the laissez faire ideology of the EU. It is bad enough that all public acquisitions have to abide EU's bullshit "competiton" rules, that impair public services because they have to shift value from benefit and quality to short sighted quantifiable metrics usually in form of untrue cost reports.

I really want Norway to be able to join the EU, but the EU has made itself an entity that would screw us over hard, effectively limiting our ability to participate beyond EEA. The EU has also decided that EEA members have no voting rights, making it hard for us to shape policy in a way so that we could join without conceding crucial societal issues to the bourgeouisie that effectively control the EU.