"For me it is an honor to have held the Presidency pro tempore of the Andean Community, I am pleased to hand over this baton now to the President of Peru, Pedro Castillo, a good friend, to whom I wish the greatest success as the new President pro tempore," said Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso at a ceremony held in Lima, Peru.

The XXII Meeting of the Andean Presidential Council concluded with a message from Peru's Castillo, who said that it is "a challenge to assume this position." He also said that it is up to the Peruvians "to open the spaces" to the rest of the members of the bloc, also composed of Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador "to be a single family."

For his part, Colombian President Gustavo Petro asked to reintegrate "Chile and Venezuela as full members," countries with which they share "the Andean heritage, both geographically, politically, historically and socially."

Petro also asked: "Why not think of a sub-regional integration that, based on the idea of an Andean homeland, reaches Argentina?"

Castillo invited his counterparts "to carry out a social reengineering of the CAN that places people as the central axis of the integration process and the ultimate goal of these advances," and said that this will be a "central issue" while he holds the pro tempore presidency of the group.

With this, he proposed to carry out "an exercise of joint reflection on the strengthening and updating of the social dimension of the Andean Community."

The main objective will be to "generate public policies that respond to the current demands and needs of the population," aimed at "reducing inequalities in the Andean sub-region."

"As a result of this evaluation, we will be able to reorient the priority areas of our work in the CAN and, if necessary, adapt the infrastructure to the new demands," Castillo concluded.