This conflicts with what I thought was the case. The 30 years minimum is the qualification in order to get the FULL basic state pension. Less than 30 years gets you a pro-rata pension - in your case 25/30 of the full basic state pension. The cash value may be frozen at the rate when you first claim (but if you are resident in the EU or IIRC some other countries you should get the same increases as any UK resident)

Or have I got it wrong?

EDIT: Forgot to add - I don't think there is a minimum for the UK contributions - even 1 year's contributions should get you a pension (admittedly only about £15 per month)

No, you are quite wrong. You will not lose your contributions to UK system. Get in touch with DHSS in Newcastle; quoting you National Insurance number. My Donna C worked in UK 1959/1960. Only two years; but she gets about 80 eurines a month from UK. Set off against her Italian pension by INPS. As I said before INPS/DHSS contact each other to decide how much each system owes you.
ciao for now,
'o nonno

I hope it is as easy as you say. When I was at one of the patronato offices (on a different matter) about a year ago, there was a guy who had worked in Germany for most of his life, he needed to produce pay slips for all the time he worked in Germany otherwise his application wouldn't have been accepted by INPS. Thankfully I kept every single pay slip

Currently I am supposed to retire at age 66 in 2029 but parliament has not yet approved the proposed amendments which will bring my pension age up to 67. Considering that I still got 17 years before I can claim my pension and I have already lost out to pension changes twice forgive me if I don't share your optimism on this matter.

In addition, knowing someone who worked for the DHSS and told us years ago that money was running out for pensions after 2020 I am not holding my breath to ever get a pension.

What annoys me most is that I am stuck with a private pension fund (about £45k) that I can't do anything with. I should have had access to it at age 50 but because of changes a while back it is now 55. At that point I can only take a small part of it as a lump sum and the rest will give me a fantastic pension of about £2.30 a week as per the last statement received. That will definitely give me the luxury lifestyle I never had.

Never mind one lives and learns

Every INPS has a convenzioni internazionali office .. whether they are efficient or not is another matter.

Money for pensions is also running out in Italy.

I'll be on the streets sometime in the future.
I might have to marry my OH to be eligible for his Italian pension .......... then I just have to make sure I live longer than him.

..the mind boggles

Hmm Mark intresting, I read it that Lorna meant "homeless" but may be she did mean "on the streets"


However, I am going to shut up now as I suspect we may be heading for a yellow card if not red if we keep going on these lines

Better a red card than a red light

Naughty boys. I meant penniless, pensionless and homeless of course.

I'm in a high class establishment now, but when it all goes tits up (or very South) the money will stop coming in and everything will dry up. Herrrmmm ! No pun intended.

nooooooooooo! none whatsoever ..

and what's that about t*ts up??


edit: love it when you call us naughty boys!

Would that they were a little bit more UP. Well they are with a good bra. Take that off and well ..................

at least they're not silicone basketballs !

Ononno,

I qualify for a full UK state pension as I have 40 years of UK contributions, I should also qualify for an INPS pension as I currently have more than 20years contributions, I am still contributing to INPS and expect to have around 30 years worth before I call it a day by then I would be around age 67/68. By then I would have around 53 years of continuous contributions but about 70 contribution years due to the fact that I paid voluntary contributions in the UK for a number of years whilst also paying INPS contributions.
Should I (can I?) claim UK state pension at 65 or should I wait untill I retire in Italy at 67/68?
Could I get both?
I have seen my contribution record at INPS (I have a screen dump too) and they have a record of my contributions (Italy and UK) unbroken back to 1964 when I was still at school ( UK NI contributions were paid as an encouragement to stay on into the 6th form as I recall).

I think these questions are best answered by
The Pension Service,
Newcastle on Tyne
0044 191 21 87777

They know all about reciprocal agreements etc.

I would hope that you qualify for both pensions; but with INPS you never know!
ciao for now
'o nonno

Chris - with all those contributions paid you should be able to retire in Italy before 67/68! Since there is an agreement between Italy and UK you will get a part of your pension from one and part from the other, however as far as I know they do not count any 'overlapping' years as double .. so you won't get 'double' pension for those years.


Gong back to the post that started it all, there is a new law which says that non-EC/agreement citizens can get a pension from Italy as long as they have paid more than 5 years contributions.
You will not get it however until you are 'retirement age', whatever that may be...
This is valid for contributiosn paid after 1996.
This is happening with a lot of the badanti and so on who come from outside the EC.