Dear British people,

You are difficult partners in Europe, but we love you and admire you all the same. We also need you – immensely – but we don’t think that gives your government a free pass to extract more and more concessions in its renegotiation with Brussels.

You also need us – us “continentals” – because the European project exists for your benefit as well as ours. Those who claim otherwise are peddling illusions. They have forgotten where we all come from, our history; and they don’t want to see what we are now confronted with, or that the only way to address those challenges is collectively.

Understand that I’m a fan. My grand-father, Georges Nougayrède, was a radio operator working for the resistance Maquis of the south-west of France during the second world war. In all the years I knew him, he hardly ever spoke about his wartime experience.

After barely escaping when the Gestapo raided his home in Toulouse, he went into hiding. After he died, in 1994, we found a small box hidden in his house containing his FFI (Forces Françaises de l’Interieur) medal and a booklet where he had written homages to those of his friends in the resistance who had been executed or deported.

Radio operators in the Maquis often communicated with the Free French in London, for air drops and other operations. Gratitude and admiration is all that my family ever felt towards Britain.

But British-bashing is happening in the corridors of many European government offices right now. It is discreet, but it is a reality. A former EU high-level official put it to me this way: “Everyone wants this over with. Enough is enough.” He was talking about the renegotiation. He describes it as “a senseless, tedious process that Cameron has inflicted on all of us, creating an unnecessary problem at a time when there are much more urgent and crucial matters to deal with.” Refugees, Syria, Ukraine, Greece – you name it.

Next week, a European council meeting will attempt to settle the UK-EU issue, so that a referendum might be held before the summer and before a predicted new inflow of refugees. Everyone hopes that calendar will hold, because everyone wants to be rid of the “British question” as soon as possible.

Cameron has been meeting Angela Merkel in Hamburg. Her officials are said to be adamant that Brexit would be “unthinkable”. The EU would be irreparably damaged, they say, not least because losing Britain would open a Pandora’s box of other potential “exits” – not tomorrow, perhaps, but thereafter. Look at the state of Hungarian or Polish politics, with all their hyperventilation about national pride and sovereignty. Look also at France, where Marine Le Pen plans to set the country on an isolationist course, if ever she gets close to power.

Talk to committed pro-Europeans and you hear open accusations of “British blackmail”. French officials are worried and irritated. One thing they want to prevent is a British veto on further integration of the eurozone. And the Poles may yet express qualms over the EU migrant benefit issue.

Still, continental intransigence is not the biggest threat to the renegotiation. A last-minute attempt by Cameron to up the ante is more likely to throw things off course. Everyone has noticed that the package devised by Donald Tusk, the European council president, earned Cameron a barrage of criticism in the British press; will he now want to show he is still putting up a fight with Brussels?

How is Britain now perceived on the continent? Challenging. But that has long been the case. Once the 1975 referendum hurdle was passed, other Europeans thought things might settle down. But then came Thatcher, with her “Give me my money back” slogan. Even Tony Blair, who wanted to cast himself as a genuine pro-European, never fully convinced continentals about his credentials, not least because he buried the idea of joining the single currency.

My friends in Brussels believe it is “in the nature” of Britain and its people to be somewhat aloof from the European project. No need to dwell here on all the reasons for this. As one German correspondent in London concluded, it probably reflects Britain’s history of navigation: constantly adjusting to the winds.

Yet the winds blowing over Europe these days make Britain’s enduring membership essential – not just for us continentals but in the interest of the UK itself. Hilary Benn made the case eloquently this week in a speech at Chatham House, in London – that British influence on so many issues, in Europe and beyond, can be sustained only if the UK is an active member of the EU.

Few believe this will be the end of the arguments. “No one believes Cameron when he says this will be the last renegotiation ever,” one experienced EU official told me. But there is a usefulness to Britain’s referendum. You’re having a genuine debate about what Europe stands for, what we share, and how we are stronger together. That’s a democratic conversation rarely had on the continent, because so many governments and elites don’t know how to approach it.

So in a way, dear British people, you will be setting a standard, for all of us. That is, if you stay in.

Yours sincerely, a European friend