The only thing holding norway back from full EU membership is fishing rights and a referendum on EU membership.

Norway seems to actually accept its current political position inside the EU's sphere of influence just fine.

Right now we are in the worst position.

We have to accept all EU rules but we don't have any influence over it. I'd take full membership over that any time but the politicians don't want to risk a 3rd referendum. So we're stuck between the "bark and the wood" as a Norwegian proverb goes.

You have a pretty great country, so I'd say what you're doing works and I'd advise against changing it.

The current agreements give you the freedom to renegotiate should the need arise. You can't do that when you have full membership.

That means very little. As the UK is demonstrating, members can invoke Article 50, begin negotiations on the parameters of future relations, and exit. Luckily for the UK, the EU very much does not want the precedent of secession, which gives the UK a small but workable amount of leverage.

In either case, changing the relationship with the EU will require negotiation, with the EU in a position of strength due, among other reasons, to the size of the single market and the awful BATNA virtually ensured by the guillotine clauses. However, full EU members looking to leave have a better negotiating position than Switzerland or EEA members.

EEA or EU members can leave any time. But when you leave, you lose access to the single market, and your economy will take a nosedive. If you're not willing to pay the price to leave the single market, you're going to have to follow EU directives and regulations. If you're going to have to follow EU directives and regulations anyway, isn't it better to at least have some say in those promulgations and insist on full EU membership?

If it‘s that what the Norwegian people want, why not. I think they know very well what they are doing.

Don't they prefer to be not in the EU, because they can keep their oil to themselves? (AFAIK if they're in the EU then EU oil companies can ask to drill in their territory: https://www.politico.eu/article/of-crustaceans-and-oil-the-c... ).

So maybe it's better to have no deciding voice but be able to keep all the money.

Oil companies can still get licenses and drill in Norway, they just have to pay taxes (80%) and that won't change.

The people decided in two referendums that they do not want to be in the EU, but the politicians did not accept it and created the EAA/EØS which basically puts us in EU in all but name with very limited power to influence what happens there. It was not democratically done.

I am pro EU, but it was the wrong way to do it.

Hey, and we in the UK are going pretty much exactly the same way!

Yep, this is how it always goes.

in my opinion, membership would be the wiser choice, especially as it becomes more and more clear geopolitical influence is done mainly through trade and softpower.

Alas, it should be a democratic choice to join the EU, the vessel which decided how (referendum or parlementary method) depends entirely on the (to-be) member state.

Well, speaking as a Brit, allow us to demonstrate Norway++

We shall finish up subject to the full set of EU obligations and privileges, but everyone shall strongly agree that the UK is not part of the EU. No no no. Just in the various unions and so forth, matching all the rules and that sort of thing. Not part of the EU. Nu uh! :)

Yeah, this is the ""best case"" Brexit option: the same as now, except we've excluded ourselves from all the political institutions of the EU. So we have to accept all the rules and get no say in them.

(The worst case option is the government is too disorganised to agree anything with anyone and we start running out of food, fuel and medicine...)