Van Rompuy, a new Brezhnev Doctrrine

Herman van Rompuy was speaking to a mixed bag of national and European Parliamentarians in Brussels today, in his speech he said something that chilled me to the bone.

national parliaments keep their budgetary sovereignty, at least as long as national policies do not threaten the financial stability of the whole.

It has dark echoes of the Brezhnez Doctrine, issued after the Prague Spring of 1968.
This is what Brezhnev said,

The peoples of the socialist countries and Communist parties certainly do have and should have freedom for determining the ways of advance of their respective countries. However, none of their decisions should damage either socialism in their country or the fundamental interests of other socialist countries, and the whole working class movement, which is working for socialism. This means that each Communist party is responsible not only to its own people, but also to all the socialist countries, to the entire Communist movement.

Of course the language is different. And of course we are talking the European not the Soviet Union.

But, but...

The similarities are frightening.

Lets rewrite the Brezhnev piece with slight amendment,

The peoples of the Member States certainly do have and should have freedom for determining the ways of advance of their respective countries. However, none of their decisions should damage the fundamental interests of the European Union and the peoples of Europe. This means that each National Parliament is responsible not only to its own people, but also to all the other member states, to the entire European movement.