President Tarja Halonen says that with today's increasingly intense media scrutiny, she would think hard about entering politics if she had to make the decision now.
According to the President, entering politics should not completely deprive a person of a private life.
"Then we would move one step in the direction of a society in which only the most hard-boiled people would dare enter politics", Halonen says in an interview with the Finnish News Agency STT.
The President noted that nobody is so good, so blameless or so flawless as to preclude revelations resulting in unpleasant situations for the individual, or his or her next of kin.
The President notes that Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) is testing the boundaries of privacy with his court case over the publication of a book by his former girlfriend.
Halonen feels that Vanhanen is partly right to have called on his ministers to be less forthcoming about certain issues. Politically sensitive matters might fail if they were to prematurely slip into the public eye.
Halonen also urges debate on whether or not Finland needs new ways of wielding influence in the European Union. She notes that there is no longer a single core in the present EU. However, she does not want to take a stand on the EU policies of the present government, noting that internal affairs of the EU are not part of the jurisdiction of the President.
