Cabinet will not (yet) boycott the World Cup in Qatar: first ‘dialogue’ about human rights

Minister Wopke Hoekstra of Foreign Affairs (CDA) said on Friday afternoon after the Council of Ministers that ‘the conversation with Qatar’ would immediately stop if the Netherlands proceeded to a boycott. “We would also be the first and only EU member state. If you close the door in one go and say ‘we won’t be coming back’, you will no longer have room for the conversation. But the point is that people there get better living and working conditions. We are already seeing the first fruits of those conversations. We want to continue with that now, it will be better if we don’t close the door now.”