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The "journées" business seems to be from a specific sense of "day" common to (at least) mediaeval Latin, French, Spanish and German - according to the OED entry for diet (= "assembly", like the Diet of Worms),

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Med.L. diēta had the various senses ‘day's journey’, ‘day's work’, ‘day's wage’, ‘space of a day’, as well as that of ‘assembly, meeting of councillors, diet of the empire’. The same senses, more or less, are (or have been) expressed by Ger. tag, and F. journée day."

So this sense of "day" also gives us German Tagung and Spanish jornadas, both meaning "conference". German Bundestag "federal parliament", Landtag "state parliament", etc., are also derived from this sense. There's a hint of this day/meeting link in adjourn, though that's from Old French. -- breffni

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My birth certificate describes my father's occupation as "journeyman bricklayer", "journeyman" being used in its later sense of "craftsman employed by someone else" but originally, of course, meaning "person paid by the day". As a freelance writer and copy-editor frequently paid by the day I like to describe myself as a journeyman journalist … - Martin Cornell