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In plenary sittings decisions are taken which have been prepared in the parliamentary groups and committees. They are binding political decisions of the Bundestag, mostly in the form of laws or resolutions. Debates form the core of plenary sittings. As regards some items on the agenda, particularly where politically undisputed decisions are concerned, the Council of Elders may agree that no debate is to take place; in such cases a vote is taken immediately: either on referral of an item or on its adoption or rejection (for the procedure concerning deliberations on bills). In general, however, plenary sittings consist of a series of debates.

The President in the Chair opens the sitting and calls the first item on the agenda. If it is a bill or a motion, he grants leave to speak, where this is requested, to a member of the Government to introduce the bill, to the mover to state the reasons for the motion, or to the rapporteur. The mover or rapporteur may demand leave to speak before the beginning and after the end of the debate, a rapporteur may do so at any time.

Nowadays movers and rapporteurs hardly ever make use of their special rights. If nobody requests leave to speak when the President asks if anyone wishes to state the reasons for a motion or speak on a report, the President in the Chair opens the debate and gives the floor to the first person on the list of speakers.

The duration of the debate on each item of business is as a rule agreed by all the parliamentary groups in the Council of Elders and confirmed by the Bundestag. If, by way of exception, no agreement is reached in the Council of Elders, the Bundestag itself decides the duration of the debate, mostly following a short procedural debate.

Speaking time in longer debates is distributed among the individual parliamentary groups in line with a fixed formula, in proportion to the relative strengths of the parliamentary groups (this does not apply to brief debates). Thus, in the 15th electoral term (2002-2006), of one hour of speaking time (or 62 minutes to be precise) the coalition parliamentary groups, the SPD and the Alliance 90/The Greens, are allocated 32 minutes, the CDU/CSU 24 minutes and the FDP 6 minutes. Within this framework the parliamentary groups themselves decide which of their members is to speak for how long on a given item. The Secretaries of the parliamentary groups inform the President in the Chair of the individual speaking times; this information is binding on him.

Pursuant to the second sentence of Article 43, paragraph (2) of the Basic Law, the members of the Federal Government and of the Bundestag have in principle an unlimited right to speak. In practice, however, their speaking time is deducted from the speaking time of the parliamentary group concerned; as a rule, therefore, the overall ratio between the speaking times of the parliamentary groups described above does not change.

Within the framework of the decisions taken by the Council of Elders and the parliamentary groups, the President in the Chair determines the order in which speakers are called. Pursuant to the Rules of Procedure, the President must take certain aspects into consideration in doing so:

"... he shall be guided by the need to ensure that debates are conducted properly and efficiently, with due regard to the different views of political parties, the arguments for and against the subject under debate, and the relative strengths of the parliamentary groups; in particular, a divergent opinion shall be heard after a speech has been delivered by a member of the Federal Government or a person commissioned by it."

One important task of the President in the Chair is to ensure that individual speakers keep to the speaking time available to them. If Members exceed the speaking time allocated to them, the President, after warning them once, directs them to discontinue speaking.

When the time allocated for the debate on an item of business has elapsed, the President closes the debate once the last speaker has finished speaking and as a rule calls for a vote to be taken. The Bundestag may of course decide to extend the duration of the debate if it considers this to be necessary, but this hardly ever occurs in practice.

After expiry of the time which the Bundestag has allocated for the debate, the President may not accept any further requests for leave to speak without the approval of the House. An exception to this rule has recently been introduced as regards leave to make remarks on the subject under discussion - so-called brief interventions. If, by way of exception, the end of a debate has not been fixed, the President must give the floor to other Members who request leave to speak until there are no more such requests or a parliamentary group moves that the debate be closed or adjourned. A motion for closure takes precedence over a motion for adjournment. However, a motion for closure of the debate may be put to the vote only after each parliamentary group has had the floor at least one. However, no use has been made of these possibilities for many years now.

Debates may vary in form and duration. The so-called"major debates"are of special interest. They mostly follow government policy statements. They take place at the beginning of the second reading of particularly important, controversial bills. Major interpellations may also give rise to major debates, and even a particularly controversial motion (containing a statement of the political will of the Bundestag) may trigger such a debate. Finally, the annual plenary debates on the occasion of the introduction and adoption of the federal budget are a permanent fixture in the parliamentary year.

The total duration of such debates is often not fixed down to the last minute but only approximately. The debate on the first government policy statement of a newly elected Chancellor and the debate on the federal budget, for instance, mostly last several days. The length of the debate is then fixed only in days and an approximate time agreed for the end of the debate each day.

Public attention focuses on these "major debates", and rightly so. Central political issues which often have a direct impact on all of us are fought over and decided in the course of these debates. Sometimes these debates are among the highlights of parliamentary life.

However, Parliament's work is primarily concerned with a wealth of detail. In order to cope with this large amount of work, various types of debate of very limited duration have been introduced. These include in particular thebrief debate, in which all the speakers are restricted to a speaking time of 5 or 10 minutes and only one or two Members from each parliamentary group plus one representative of the government may take the floor. In this manner numerous items on the agenda may be discussed on a full sitting day, which lasts from 9.00 hours until 20.00 or 21.00 hours or later, with an hour's break for lunch. Such debates are mainly intended to allow the parliamentary groups publicly to state their views on the items in question.

These speeches often deal with highly specialized issues and therefore have to be thoroughly prepared; this explains why these debates are not always particularly colourful or spontaneous and mostly arouse little interest among Members who are not familiar with the subject matter. Moreover, the arguments have frequently been expressed at parliamentary group meetings and in public statements. This is one reason why often only a few Members are present in the plenary chamber.

But even when major debates take place, the public must appreciate that Members cannot be present in the plenary chamber for four hours in succession in the morning and for even longer in the afternoon and evening.

During a week of sittings in Berlin they have a great many other tasks which citizens - rightly - expect them to perform.

In addition to participating in the deliberations and votes in the plenary of the German Bundestag and in its committees, Members' duties include attending meetings of their own parliamentary group, its working groups and working parties; reading political and specialist journals; studying files, motions and bills; possibly preparing their own speeches and contributions to debates; making telephone calls, dealing with correspondence from all sections of the population, particularly from their own constituency; and having political discussions with citizens, other Members and representatives of interest groups. In view of their numerous duties, individual Members must be able to decide for themselves which parts of plenary sittings on which items on the agenda they consider it important to attend. Hence their presence in the plenary cannot be taken as a yardstick for measuring the sense of duty, commitment, interest or performance of the Members of the German Bundestag.

Yet the impression that plenary sittings are poorly attended continues to prevail among the public - an unsatisfactory state of affairs for the Bundestag. Moreover, this unfavourable impression cannot be effectively influenced by arguments. The package of parliamentary reforms which the Bundestag adopted in 1995 therefore contains a number of measures intended to make plenary sittings more attractive both within and without Parliament. The most important reforms are as follows:

1. Fundamental, central topics are debated on the Thursday of weeks of sittings for approximately 4 to 6 hours and generally broadcast live by the media (this is known as the"Thursday debate"). During this time no meetings of other bodies take place. The time devoted to such debates on matters of principle is called "core time". Speaking time is generally limited to about 10 minutes to give as many Members as possible an opportunity to speak.
2. The possibility of suspending the sitting if an insufficient number of Members are present has been extended: doubts about the presence of a quorum may be expressed not only by a parliamentary group or 5 per cent of Members but also by the Chair in agreement with the parliamentary groups.
3. Specialized topics mainly of interest to experts are to be removed from the agenda of plenary sittings. They are not, however, to be banished behind closed doors, where most committee meetings take place. Debates in the form ofextended public committee deliberations(Rule 69a of the Rules of Procedure) have therefore been introduced. The committees concerned with an item, i.e. the committee responsible and the committees asked for an opinion, may conduct a joint public debate in a smaller room also equipped for media coverage. The debate ends with a vote on a recommendation to the plenary. This debate is chaired by the chairperson of the committee responsible. Such specialized debates replace the second reading of bills; thus only the final vote on the recommendations adopted in the course of the "small debate" has to take place in the plenary. It remains to be seen whether this complicated and time-consuming procedure will gain acceptance.

One special form of debate is thedebate on matters of topical interest. It was originally introduced to give Members who were not satisfied with the reply given by the Federal Government to a question in Question Time, and regarded it as evasive or in any case inadequate, an opportunity for further discussion. In the meantime the possibilities of taking up a matter of general topical interest in this way have been expanded: today a debate on matters of topical interest takes place when it is agreed in the Council of Elders or if a parliamentary group or at least 31 Members so demand.

The number of debates on matters of topical interest has now stabilized at a high level; in each of the last three electoral terms (1990-1994, 1994-1998 and 1998-2002) 141 such debates were held.

The fact that the Bundestag debates topical issues at short notice is certainly to be welcomed. Yet too frequent use of this device and the resultant discussion of less suitable subjects can easily devalue this form of parliamentary debate.

Only one debate on matters of topical interest can take place per sitting day; an additional debate on a different topic would, if necessary, have to be postponed to the following sitting day.

Debates on matters of topical interest have two distinctive features: firstly, they are limited to a total of 60 minutes and, secondly, the speaking time of each individual speaker is restricted to 5 minutes. The Federal Government has stated that it too is in principle willing to keep to the 5-minute limit. However, members of the government may not - on account of the constitutionally guaranteed right of representatives of the government and the Bundesrat to be heard at any time (second sentence of Art. 43, paragraph (2)) - be directed to discontinue speaking; under the Rules of Procedure, a parliamentary group may therefore demand that a debate without any restrictions concerning the duration or speaking time be opened, if a member of the government speaks for longer than 10 minutes. The reason for this provision was the 27-minute speech made by the Federal Chancellor in a debate on matters of topical interest on 15 February 1979. The advantage of debates on matters of topical interest is, as already stated, that it gives Parliament an opportunity to comment without delay on current affairs. However, the short speaking time is often a considerable disadvantage. In 5 minutes some ideas can be expressed but it is hardly possible to place complex problems in an overall context.

Since October 1988 there has been a new form of short debate, which has now been included in the Rules of Procedure:questions put to the Federal Government. The Bundestag wanted to introduce a means of obtaining information about the deliberations of the Federal Government immediately after its weekly cabinet meetings. On the Wednesday of weeks of sittings questions are therefore addressed to the Federal Government at 13.00 hours. Members may put to the Federal Government, whose members are present in the plenary, questions about the preceding cabinet meeting but also about other topical political matters. As a rule this dialogue lasts 30 minutes. In the 14th electoral term (1998-2002) 61 such question-and-answer sessions took place.

In an effort to make plenary debates more lively and to encourage a spontaneous exchange of arguments and viewpoints, the possibility of making remarks - called brief interventions - during or at the end of a contribution to the debate was, following a trial period, included in the Rules of Procedure in 1990. The instrument of questions put to the speaker in the course of his or her speech only permits direct questions to be addressed to the speaker; in the case of a brief intervention, however, a question may be introduced by a short statement, or a statement may be made independently of a question. In order to keep more or less to the overall timetable for the debate, brief interventions may not last longer than 3 minutes. If the brief intervention follows a contribution to the debate, the speaker may reply once.

A time limit of 5 minutes applies to several kinds of statements which can be made by Members during or outside a debate. Thus the President gives precedence to Members requesting leave to speak to move aprocedural motion. Such a motion must relate to the subject under debate or to the agenda. Leave to speak on the Rules of Procedure is thus restricted exclusively to procedural matters: the issue with which a debate is concerned may not be dealt with in detail. It is, however, often difficult to distinguish between procedural aspects and the issues at stake.

Members may deliver astatement on the debateto rebut any remarks made about their person in the course of a debate or to correct observations that they themselves have made. Leave to make such a statement is generally granted after the conclusion, suspension or adjournment of the debate. However, the President may give precedence to Members requesting the floor for this purpose in the course of the debate itself.

After the conclusion of a debate Members may make astatement on the vote, explaining why they have voted in a particular way. As a rule the President permits such explanations of vote before a vote is taken. Such statements may only be made on the final vote on an item. If they are made in writing, they are included in the annex to the Stenographic Record.

Finally, the President may, before calling the first item on the agenda or after the conclusion, suspension, or adjournment of the debate, grant leave to a Member to make astatement on matters not included in the agenda. The Member must inform him of the statement in advance in writing. It may not refer to an item on the agenda but is merely intended to give Members an opportunity to provide information on an event, outline the actual course of events or make personal comments on remarks made outside the Bundestag on an event concerning the Member or on a political event.

The term "statement" is used in another sense elsewhere in the Rules of Procedure. In connection with deliberations on recommendations of the Mediation Committee and on an objection lodged by the Bundesrat to a bill adopted by the Bundestag only statements may be made; in both cases a debate prior to the vote is expressly declared to be inadmissible. The duration of such debates is not limited. The difference between such statements and contributions to a debate is that the speaker may only explain the parliamentary group's position on the compromise proposal or on the objection lodged by the Bundesrat, without referring to the statements made by the other parliamentary groups.