Is Qatar really that important to the Netherlands? And 7 more questions about the World Cup

1 The cabinet wants to go to the World Cup in Qatar, despite a disapproval motion by the House of Representatives. Is that just possible?

Yes, that’s possible. A motion adopted by the House of Representatives is not binding on the cabinet. This has a constitutional reason: it is not the House of Representatives, but the cabinet that governs and therefore makes the final choices when it comes to policy. However, it is an unwritten rule that the cabinet will, in principle, carry out an adopted parliamentary motion.

In 2020, Rutte III refused to carry out a motion asking for an increase in healthcare salaries. But it was accidentally adopted because a Christian Union MP voted incorrectly. The motion thus went against the wishes of the coalition, which made it easier to ignore.

Things are different in Qatar. Coalition parties D66 and ChristenUnie supported the SP motion. They find it very unfortunate that the cabinet is disregarding this motion to stay away from the World Cup that starts next month.

If the House of Representatives finds it really unacceptable that a motion is not implemented, there could theoretically be a crisis of confidence between the House and the cabinet. The Qatar issue is not important enough for that.

2 Prime Minister Rutte calls the relationship with Qatar “too important” for a boycott. What is that relationship?

Although both countries have only had embassies together since 2006, the Netherlands and Qatar work closely together in various areas.

From an economic point of view, energy contacts are the most important. Qatar is one of the largest sources of liquefied gas (LNG). It has the largest gas field in the world. The Netherlands is now not a major gas customer of Qatar.

Like other European countries, however, the Netherlands hopes to be able to import more gas from Qatar. Since gas imports from Russia have largely disappeared, European LNG prices are structurally higher than Asian prices for the first time, which means that the ties with Qatar may just become closer. The large investments that the country is now making in gas production will even determine the moment when the European gas market will become less tight,” says Jilles van den Beukel of think tank HCSS. Qatar wants to increase its production by 70 billion cubic meters to 180 billion in the coming years.

In the past, the port of Rotterdam has collaborated with the LNG port of Ras Laffan in Qatar, but not anymore. Shell has built a huge so-called GTL installation in Qatar that turns gas into liquid fuel products. Dutch companies such as BAM and Boskalis also contributed to the construction of the stadiums and associated infrastructure.

Prime Minister Rutte also referred on Wednesday to the facilitating role Qatar has played (and sometimes still plays) in the evacuation of people from Afghanistan. Qatar is one of the few states with fairly good relations with the Taliban. Partly for this reason, the Dutch mission in Kabul was moved to Qatar after the capture of the Afghan capital last summer.

3 How many workers have died working for the World Cup in Qatar?

There are very different numbers about this. The British newspaper The Guardian After investigation, it said that 6,500 people have been killed since Qatar was awarded the World Cup. Qatar and the world football association FIFA strongly contradict this. FIFA boss Gianni Infantino talks about three victims. It only counts the workers who died on stadium construction sites. But according to eyewitnesses there are also many more than three. And more importantly: stadiums are only a small part of the total World Cup infrastructure.

Moreover, most employees do not die at their workplace, but elsewhere. The Guardian relied on data from embassies in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, where most guest workers come from. This concerns all guest workers from those countries who died in Qatar between 2011 and 2020, so not just workers on World Cup projects. There are no hard figures that make that distinction. In addition, Qatar refuses to investigate causes of death, making it impossible to determine which deaths are related to the harsh working conditions. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty and HRW assume thousands of World Cup deaths.

4 Is Minister Hoekstra right that the human rights situation in Qatar has improved?

Human rights organizations recognize that Qatar has been trying to make improvements in recent years, in collaboration with the ILO, the UN labor organization. Stricter rules have been introduced for employers and, for example, refrigerated rooms have been built where workers can take a breather. But there is still a great deal of monitoring of compliance with the rules. There were 200 inspectors this spring, while some 30,000 workers were working on the stadiums. Tens of thousands of guest workers are still working outside the stadiums and their working conditions have not improved, in some cases even worsened, as the inspectorate’s focus has been on the stadiums.

5 What would be the economic and political damage if the Netherlands did not go?

This World Cup is a prestige project for which Qatar has spared no expense and the autocratic emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani would probably take a boycott as an affront to him personally. This could mean that Dutch companies could be sidelined in advance in future projects. Qatari diplomats may also be less inclined to put in a good word for the Netherlands with the Taliban.