This was written by someone I know:
I have an Irish passport. My husband is German and my children are British. My European family would not exist without the EU. Ireland’s membership of the EU encouraged me to study languages. (I dreamt of being a Eurocrat once upon a time.) An Erasmus exchange led me to my future husband and our rights to work and live anywhere in the EU means that the UK is now our home.
Tomorrow British voters will decide on whether the UK should remain a member of the EU. I’m worried about the result but come what may I will be glad when it’s over. The referendum debates have frustrated, enraged and baffled me at times. Enough has already been said about the poison and wilful misinformation of the Leave campaign but Remain’s tactics have been problematic too. Some days it seems the best the Remain camp can say is that the EU is tedious and convoluted but necessary, like some kind of unpleasant medicine that we just have to swallow. The EU definitely has weaknesses and needs reform but I would have liked to see a more positive case for membership made.
I personally wish to thank the original architects of the EU and all the Eurocrats who have followed. Thank you for having a crazy idea and somehow making it work. Thank you for settling the coal and steel disputes which rent Europe asunder in too many brutal wars. Thank you for helping make the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic seem less worth killing over. Thank you for regulations to protect workers’ and consumers’ rights, to challenge discrimination, to reduce mobile phone bills, to improve the quality of our air, our water, our beaches, our food. But most of all, thank you for my family.