[1] On 15 June 2000, the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament proposed setting up a temporary committee on the ECHELON interception system.
The goal of the committee was to confirm the existence of ECHELON and to assess the compatibility of such a system with European law.
Carlos Coelho, a Portuguese politician who served as the committee's chairman, remarked that "everyone has chosen to forget this report and its conclusions".
[8] In May 2001, as the committee was finalizing its report on ECHELON, a delegation was sent to Washington, D.C. to investigate the surveillance network, with planned trips to meet U.S. officials from various government bodies including the following agencies and departments: All meetings were cancelled by the U.S. government and the committee was forced to end its trip prematurely.
[9] Several EU member states such as Britain and the Netherlands declined to contribute to the report and refused to co-operate with their parliaments to investigate the ECHELON system.