The European Union and the African Union have pledged to hold a long-delayed summit at the end of this year.
The summit has been delayed due to disagreement over the participation of Zimbabwe.
Plans for an EU-AU summit have been on hold since 2003 because Britain and several other EU states refused to attend if Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, accused of severe human rights violations, was invited.
African states would not attend if he was barred.
Portugal now hopes to stage the summit in December and has made boosting ties with Africa a top priority of its six-month presidency of the EU, but it is not clear how it will get around the Zimbabwe issue.
'It is high time that we have this meeting ... we can't allow anything to get in the way of a summit,' German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul told reporters after the EU and the African Union discussed the issue today.
Ghana's foreign minister, Nana Akufo-Addo, agreed: 'Zimbabwe should not be something that stands in the way of the summit, in the way of the relations of Europe and Africa, even though it's a matter both Europe and Africa are legitimately concerned about.'
He said Africa needed the summit to strengthen ties and define new, more balanced relations between the two continents.
Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado told a separate event the summit was all the more vital as China was stepping up its co-operation with the continent.
The African Development Bank is to hold its annual meeting in Shanghai on May 16 & 17, highlighting China's commitmemt to boost its relationship with the continent.
'The EU is not living up to this challenge,' Amado told the Friends of Europe think-tank in Brussels.
Akufo-Addo seemed to offer a possible solution to the Zimbabwe issue, by saying that while the EU could not pick and choose which county it invites, Zimbabwe's president might be replaced by a representative.
'If it is a summit, Zimbabwe comes at the level of its leader or somebody in a representative capacity,' he said.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said there was enough time before the planned meeting to find a solution.
