The Register quotes an EU official as saying that "The truth is that we in Europe don’t have the technical ability to interpret this stuff," and that this is the reason why "We rely on the Americans to process it and pass it on as intelligence." Many European intelligence agencies end up as beneficiaries in the arrangement as they are not permitted by their home countries to gather such information themselves. In the event, delegates were apparantly put under huge pressure from US representatives to pass the deal:
The pressure from the Americans was "massive," say diplomats in Brussels. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently told her European counterparts that the fate of the West hung in the balance. And in the capital cities of Europe, American ambassadors stormed governments like door-to-door salespeople. As one EU foreign minister put it, "they pulled out all the moral and political stops."
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