Some observers blamed the Eurozone crisis partly on a lack of effective fiscal union. The Budget of the European Union is relatively small compared to the budgets of the Eurozone countries, which are set independently. Leading up to the crisis, some countries incurred more debt than the unenforced EU guidelines called for. Due to the centralized monetary union, countries experiencing problems were unable to apply local monetary policy to recover, and destabilized the currency which is also used by more economically healthy countries. The national budgets and debt levels of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, on the other hand, are also set completely independently, which could cause similar problems in a situation where monetary policy was centralized.