section_path: Organization/Legislative calender
section_name: Legislative calender
paragraph_text: Legislative calender
  
  The Bundestag cannot be adjourned or prorogued during the current legislative session, but is always fully capable of acting and sets its own legislative calendar. Normally, the Bundestag sits for at least twenty weeks per year, interrupted by non-sessional weeks, especially a long parliamentary summer recess, during which the MPs are present in their constituencies. The course of a session week is traditionally always the same: meetings of the parliamentary faction's internal committees take place on Monday and Tuesday mornings, and meetings in the faction-plenary on Tuesday afternoon. From Wednesday to Friday, plenary sessions and committee meetings take place in parallel (this is the reason why often very few members are present at plenary debates). Committee meetings are interrupted on very important items on the agenda so that all MPs have the opportunity to be present in the plenary hall. The highlights of the procedures include government statements by the Chancellor and the general debate at the beginning of the annual budget deliberations, during which there is a direct clash between the Chancellor and the opposition leader.
  
  Independently of the usual procedure, the Bundestag can also convene for extraordinary sessions at any time. This must happen if one third of the MPs, the President of Germany or the Chancellor request it (Basic Law, Article 39.3).