The European Union and China will return to the work of diplomacy and fence-mending at a summit in Prague on Wednesday as they seek to strengthen a relationship that is still a work in progress and marked by stubborn disagreements on a number of political and economic fronts.

Those divisions were on display in December when Beijing abruptly withdrew from the last Sino-EU summit to protest at the decision by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to meet Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.