What is the project about?

REAL_DEAL (Reshaping European Advances towards green Leadership Through Deliberative Approaches and Learning) will reshape the active participation of citizens and stakeholders around the European Green Deal.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101037071.

This trans-disciplinary project brings together researchers of deliberative democracy from a wide range of disciplines, including political science, law, sociology, and psychology. The researchers are collaborating with the EU´s largest civil society networks and NGOs to reach millions of citizens and thousands of policymakers. The project was co-developed and has participation of both CSOs and researchers in largely all of its activities. It is also co-coordinated between a research organisation (Research Institute for Sustainability, RIFS) and a CSO network (European Environmental Bureau, EEB).

In a co-creation process, REAL DEAL is currently developing, and will test and validate innovative tools and formats to propel deliberative democracy to the next level. It will test its innovations in deliberative processes for a green and just transition in around 13 countries. It will also examine pan-European formats ranging from digital deliberation processes to in-person formats such as an Assembly for a Gender-Just Green Deal and a pan-European Youth Climate Assembly.

REAL DEAL will co-create a comprehensive protocol for meaningful citizens´ participation and deliberation to work towards the objectives of the European Green Deal. It will develop recommendations on how to design such processes and their application in various contexts by European institutions, Member States, and civil society alike. The project's participants will develop a new hybrid model of political inclusion that will be:

• analytic (including post-normal, transdisciplinary science);
• strategic (including dedicated stakeholders for environmental and sustainable transformations);
• deliberative (including citizens from all countries in all their diversity and uniqueness); and
• socially compatible with legal, ethical and international standards (including civil rights, gender equality, national political culture, impacts for non-European nations and generations to come).

The topics addressed by this project throughout its duration will reflect the political agenda and policy priorities of the EU as well as the core concerns of citizens. The following policy and transformation areas are likely to be covered:

• Just transitions and root causes of inequality across the EU
• Sustainable food systems and agriculture
• Energy transitions and climate action
• Sustainable mobility
• Sustainable consumption and production (including the circular economy, chemicals, waste)

Specific objectives

The REAL DEAL specific objectives are:

• Provide an analysis and selection of meaningful, effective, representative, inclusive, gender-sensitive, youth sensitive and impactful citizens’ participation and deliberation criteria, processes, concepts and formats in the EGD and its wider sustainable development objectives.