Petro announces Colombia’s exit from the Andean Community and launches the process to join MERCOSUR as a full member

On April 9, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said that, for the country, the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) is effectively over. He instructed the Minister of Foreign Affairs to initiate an official procedure for Colombia to join MERCOSUR as a full member.

The decision followed a step by Ecuador: starting May 1, the country will raise tariffs on Colombian goods from 50% to 100%. Against this backdrop, Petro called the situation “monstrous” and linked it to Colombia’s exit from the Andean Pact.

“It’s simply monstrous, but it means the end of the Andean Pact for Colombia. There’s nothing left to do there,” Petro wrote on the social network X. The Foreign Minister, Yolanda Villavicencio, confirmed that Colombia has already submitted an application to move from associate member status to full membership in MERCOSUR.

From retaliation to a hard pivot

Colombia initially responded symmetrically. On April 10, the Minister of Trade Dayana Marcela Morales announced similar measures—100% tariffs on goods from Ecuador. But just three days later, Petro reversed the decision during a cabinet meeting in Ipiales, a border city that felt the disruption most strongly.

The pivot was severe: “Ecuador’s key goods will enter Colombia with a zero tariff, and everything else must be replaced with domestic production,” Petro told the trade minister during a live broadcast.

As a result, the confrontation became asymmetrical: Ecuador kept 100% tariffs across the full range of Colombian goods, while Colombia effectively set a zero rate for “critical” categories and compensated the rest through an import substitution policy.

Petro framed the arrangement pragmatically: after the inauguration of his successor on July 28, he will leave office, and the inflation surge in border departments will become “his last legacy.”

Two blocs, one “overlapping” framework

For those tracking supranational groupings with a regime of free movement of persons (SSB), Petro’s statement raises a key structural question: how do overlapping trade and migration frameworks work in South America?

CAN was created in 1969 under the Cartagena Agreement. The community gives four member countries—Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru—the ability to enter without visas using identity documents, and it also provides mutual categories of temporary and permanent residence through the Andean immigration statute.

But CAN is a “layer within a layer”: all Andean countries are simultaneously participants in the MERCOSUR Residence Agreement. It covers 9 countries across more than 16.4 million sq. km.

This dual system creates a safety net. If a Colombian citizen wanted to move to Ecuador, they could rely on one of the legal mechanisms. Even if Colombia leaves CAN, residence rights in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia would continue to be governed by the MERCOSUR Residence Agreement, taking into account participation by other countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

At the same time, the real “loss of CAN” would be CAN-specific: trips across the Andean region using identity documents, the specifics of an “Andean passport,” and any future mechanisms that the Andean immigration statute may still implement in practice.

What Colombia’s full membership in MERCOSUR will change

Colombia is already an associate member of MERCOSUR and fully participates in the Residence Agreement. Moving to full membership would give the country voting rights and a seat in decision-making bodies, including the MERCOSUR Common Market Council.

At the same time, Colombia would have to comply with MERCOSUR’s common external tariff—a trade restriction that associate members are usually allowed to follow only partially.

How acceptable this trade-off is for Colombia—given existing free trade agreements with the United States and separate understandings with the EU through the CAN-EU framework—remains an open question.

The case of Venezuela is telling. Caracas announced its exit from CAN in 2006, joined MERCOSUR as a full member in 2012, and was then suspended in 2016. In the end, the sequence did not deliver the expected diversification of trade and political leverage.

For the investment-migration market, changes in Colombia’s membership may be less visible: residence rights that make the country a “gateway” into MERCOSUR space remain in place under existing residence regimes.

In particular, the Colombian investor visa supports residence based on roughly $46,000 in real estate or business investment. Citizenship is possible after five years of permanent residence (for citizens of Latin America and the Caribbean, the period may be reduced to one year). Citizenship, in turn, opens access to the MERCOSUR Residence Agreement, widely considered the largest SSB in the world by land area.

A political factor: elections in Colombia

Petro cannot run for re-election. In Colombia, elections are scheduled for May 31, with a second round on June 21 if no candidate wins a majority.

The field includes candidates from different political currents: Iván Cepeda (Petro’s “Historical Pact” coalition), Abelardo de la Espriella (a lawyer from the right wing), and Paloma Valencia (center-right, former senator).

The fate of Colombia’s MERCOSUR application will depend on the winner. Formal accession requires ratification by all current member states and alignment with the bloc’s trade protocols.

Even with a favorable outcome, the process will likely take years. When Venezuela went through accession, it took about six years from application to full-member status, and the key factor was coordination of positions among the participating governments.

A new president who is not Petro could withdraw the application. Separately, exiting CAN also requires a legal procedure—formal denunciation of the Cartagena Agreement. It includes a five-year exit period during which prior trade obligations continue to apply.

Damage is already happening

Regardless of how the bloc-level process plays out, Colombia–Ecuador bilateral trade has effectively been shattered already. According to the national statistics agency DANE, in 2025 trade between the two countries totaled $2.8 billion. Colombia, in particular, had a surplus of $1.016 billion.

Even with a starting tariff rate of 30%, Colombian imports from Ecuador fell by 66.8%.

The hardest hit has been border communities. Based on estimates by the Ipiales Chamber of Commerce and Industry, job losses exceed 5,000, about 12,000 families are affected, and daily losses are estimated at $5.5 million. At the same time, according to the same chamber, the volume of contraband through more than 50 illegal crossings between Nariño and Caquetá has risen by roughly 70%.

Speaking from Ipiales, Petro explained the logic this way: closing legal channels does not stop trade—it simply shifts the “border” to organized crime. The argument also applies to the broader question of bloc membership: formal trade architecture is precisely needed to prevent the kind of scenarios currently unfolding on the Colombia–Ecuador border.

What this could mean for the Andean Community

If Colombia truly carries out its plans, CAN could shrink to three members: Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Peru holds presidential elections on April 12, adding uncertainty to the community’s political trajectory.

Bolivia is already “overlapping” both frameworks: it joined MERCOSUR as a full member in 2024.

A three-country Andean Community would look like a weakened format. Colombia is the region’s largest economy, accounting for roughly half of the combined GDP of CAN participants. Without Bogotá, CAN’s role as a trade tool would become secondary, even though free-movement rules for the remaining countries would continue to apply.

For investment migration, immediate practical impacts are limited: residence rights within MERCOSUR space remain available to Colombian citizens regardless of CAN’s fate. Ecuador’s investor visa—offering a four-year path to citizenship with an investment from $46,000—will also continue to provide access to MERCOSUR residence rights.

The biggest impact will be political. South America’s trade architecture—long characterized by block overlap and cross-membership—starts to crack along ideological lines. That increases risks for areas where the free-movement regime was previously viewed as relatively stable, even if it came with bureaucratic costs.

Anyone building a relocation or legalization strategy based on MERCOSUR or CAN membership should closely watch the outcome of Colombia’s May 31 elections.