The EU didn't want to give up on UK market, it was the UK that gave up on EU, but they simply couldn't give them the same benefits every other member has just because it is valuable - that would defeat the perks of being a EU member.
I can give you an example, a lot of people I know that did ecommerce and sold on PAN EU Amazon used UK as a hub for imports - not anymore of course.
Maybe things will improve on customs processes because there might be a big volume of bureaucracy that wasn't there before, but it will always be a bottleneck. Such bottleneck makes sense because the EU must guarantee that the block businesses aren't being penalized by UK businesses.
UK represents only 18% of the post brexit EU market. The problem is that that the Uk now is a completely seperate market, so is in direct competition for attention with other non-EU markets. Why should a EU company focus on the UK when e.g. China is a much larger market and growing much faster? Or Japan? Or Brazil?
> Why should a EU company focus on the UK when e.g. China is a much larger market and growing much faster? Or Japan? Or Brazil?
Some reasons would include China and Japan being highly protectionist and difficult markets to enter into successfully, the language barriers, but most importantly, distance.
Also, in practice the EU is arguably less of a single market than it appears to be on paper anyway. Different countries not only have different languages but also different regulations in a surprising number of areas, and shipping between EU states isn't particularly cheap or fast from what I've heard.
The situation wasn't perfect (or, indeed, finished) but nothing has been gained, and EU & UK consumers buying goods online, EU & UK small businesses and EU & UK large businesses are all complaining about the new restrictions on trade and flow of goods between GB and EU, and GB and NI.
I don't see a good way around the language issue -- every developed country requires most consumer products to be described in the official language(s). (I see French and Spanish on "Made in USA" things, presumably so they can be sold easily in Canada and Mexico.) Medium and large manufacturers put multiple languages on the label, either all of them (e.g. Ikea) or some of them (e.g. my toothpaste is labelled for sale in Britain, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark). Very small manufactures just stick a sticker over the default label, you see the same at the Chinese food shop and the Polish food shop -- that does increase costs.
The EU has a project to improve cross-border delivery, which I think is particularly motivated to improve the situation for individuals and small/medium businesses -- large businesses that move stuff by the lorryload aren't bothered by the borders. (e.g. "Amazon.de" has a distribution centre in Poland, and offers free delivery to Czechia, Denmark, Sweden etc if you spend €39, rather than the €29 for free delivery in Germany. Can an American business in California offer flat-rate delivery to the whole USA? I see e.g. UPS does, but I don't know if there are alternatives that undercut them for in-state or next-state delivery.)