I had come to believe from a few things I had read that CADPAT was developed in the early 1990s and was taken on as the official uniform in 1997. Seems I was only partly correct.
This site mentions that initial trials were done in 1998 with another lot of trials done in 2001 so it looks as though there was a fair bit of time between intitial development and large scale issue
http://www.hyperstealth.com/CADPAT-MARPAT.htm
I think it would be believable that development could have been sped up due to the war between Soviets and Chinese and so while it would be rare, it could have found its way to Europe when NATO and WTO clashed.