What being in the EU has meant for my family

What has Europe ever done for me?

It's a question that the impending referendum has caused me to ask myself. I had always been supportive, but throwing myself into the campaign to remain meant I needed to be clear in my mind why I was supportive and what the benefits were. And having helped so far at street stalls in Truro, Plymouth, Taunton, Yeovil, Bristol and Stroud, it has proved a useful exercise as voters have rightly demanded to know what good the EU has done.

And the way I thought about it was to think about the generations of my own family. How have their lives been different because the EU exists and because we're in?

Take my father, for example. He was a Royal Marine in the Sixties and Seventies. My brother too served in the armed forces, in the Eighties and Nineties, and his daughter - my niece - too. And my brother-in-law is a serviceman today and has been so for about 20 years. All of them have seen active service, but none of them thankfully were thrown into a conflict on the European mainland. Indeed, in the case of my father and brother, they once stood ready to defend our country from communist dictatorships in eastern Europe that are today our democratic friends and allies.

It is true that Nato helped prevent war between the West and the East during the Cold War, and stands ready to defend us today should Putin get a bit too trigger-happy. But there is a difference between an absence of war and a culture of peace. And it has been the European Union that has made it the boring, day-to-day norm that European countries talk with each other and work with each other on the big issues facing our continent. And it was the pull of EU membership, not the defensive military alliance of Nato, that helped embed democratic government and civil liberties in those eastern Europe countries that joined the EU a decade or so ago.

Ever since my father's generation, the EU has been improving our national security. It's easy to take it all for granted, as many Brexiteers do, but it has worked.

During the lifetime of my generation, Europe has been transformed. As a child, eastern Europe was closed off, as an adult it is open. For me this has meant a whole host of holiday destinations, stretching right into the former Soviet Union. And thanks to the freedoms that come with membership of the European Union, my partner and I are free to travel where we please across a dozen or so countries that were pretty much off limits to my parents' generation. Thanks to the EU we can use our mobiles whilst we're there at reasonable cost, and the European Health Insurance Card gives us extra peace of mind should we need medical care.

For the next generation, I think of my nephew. He's just finishing his first year studying biomedical sciences in Bristol. Our membership of the EU means he will be free to work in the pharmaceutical industry in any of the 27 other EU Member States. Indeed, he can spend part of his studies in Germany in a process made simple thanks to the EU.

Plus, my mum and sister and nieces have benefited thanks to EU guarantees on things like equal pay for women as well as steps like guaranteed paid leave for antenatal appointments.

Finally I think of my niece still at primary school here in Devon. She has the rest of the century to look forward to. For her sake I dearly hope we stay in and that the EU continues to build the peace, prosperity and opportunity that it has been working on now for several decades.

By thinking about my family it's easier to think about how the EU has helped each generation. The job of building peace has been going on since the foundation of what is now the EU back in the Fifties, and continues to this day. In my own lifetime, Europe has opened up in a process greatly helped by the EU of western Europe embracing the new democracies of eastern Europe. And today I can see in through nephew's experience the very real opportunities for British people to work across our continent.

* Stuart Bonar was the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate in Plymouth Moor View.