What do you mean by safety net? If you haven't paid into pension funds (as required for employees but not eg freelancers), then you aren't receiving anything out of it. The situation for pensioners is actually very different: many can't live on regular pension so they're going to southern EU countries, or eg Thailand for much lower cost of living compared to central EU. Also, Germany's SPD party wants to buy pensioner votes by giving long-time employees additional tax money ("Grundrente"), but not eg freelancers who actually paid these taxes - a corrupt and unconstitutional plan. Their pension story is completely bankrupt anyway; in Berlin they're putting limits on housing rents and all other kinds of unhelpful restrictions on landlords, when renting property is one of the few ways to make a living when retired due to the ECB's zero interest rate policies.