Many people in the EU have always argued for a soft Brexit, where the UK would remain in the common market. It was really the Brexiteers who kept insisting on a hard Brexit. You can't blame that on the EU.

The problem is that the Leave campaign had promised the impossible: to stay in the common market for goods and services, but leave the common market for labour (free movement), and not pay for anything anymore. The world just doesn't work that way.