Thanks for that info Dinger X, I did not know that a controller could do this in the US, we definitively can't do that here. You can suggest it but it is always the PIC who declares it.
The US military also have strange rules for that, I had once a C141 declaring an emergency, it was very busy, took a lots of efforts to clear the airspace below him, but he just continued his flight to planned destination and refused to descend. After investigation he just lost one engine, and it is ( was at the time at least) mandatory for USAF to declare an emergency in this case.
All this shows once again that despite ICAO everybody still uses its own rules.