Deprived of pension for two years by Denmark. This is what happened to an 85-year-old from Sassari, Piero Marras, who worked for several years as a restaurateur in the Scandinavian state, earning contributions for retirement.
But from 2021 to 2023, Udbetaling Danmark-International Pension, the Danish social security institution, suspended payments, considering the man “deceased”.
"A very serious matter": this is how Valentina Cari, the man's lawyer, defines the situation in a letter sent to Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani where the paradoxical story is retraced. "We sent them all the documentation, including the certificates of existence in life, and only at the end did they decide to give my client 5 thousand euros". That is, a minimal part of what is owed that, apparently, despite the evidence that Marras is still alive and well, they do not intend to return.
"My client," Cari recalls, "went through a period of poverty and humiliation, forced to ask for loans to get by."
Supported by the lawyer's complaints, Marras has been fighting for a long time to get back what he is entitled to, even if in Copenhagen they struggle to believe in his reasons. "In 2021 - says the pensioner, an existence as a worker between Germany, the Canary Islands and Denmark - they didn't even send me the certificate of existence in life". But why are they angry with her and not paying her? "They must be saving - he jokes bitterly - for the next war with Russia".
