New ethical rules are needed in the financial world to prevent crises like the current global credit crunch, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said Friday.
''Rules of behaviour, of ethical behaviour, must be established in...banks, in the credit system,'' Napolitano said in an interview with Vatican media.
Napolitano was asked to comment on his recent remark, at a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, on the ''corrosive'' effect of a lack of ethics in the business world.
''Is it possible to find a synthesis between the logic of the free market and respect for the fundamental needs of individuals?'' he was asked.
The president replied by underscoring the need for ethics and a return to the social market economy.
He remarked that this type of economic policy, created in Germany as ''a great effort to combine market logic with social principles'', had been undermined by free-marketeers.
Napolitano said the ''dramatic impulse'' of the financial crisis should give ''fresh impetus to efforts to relaunch this vision''.
Earlier, Napolitano urged the media ''not to fuel alarmism'' amid waves of panic selling on stock markets.
Calling for ''more measured and less sensational'' headlines, he said the media bore ''a great responsibility'' not to scare investors.
