REAL_DEAL will stimulate a pan-European debate to reshape citizens’ and stakeholders’ active participation through deliberative processes around the European Green Deal. It brings together researchers and practitioners of deliberative democracy from a wide range of disciplines including environmental rights and the law of public participation, ethics and responsible innovation, gender studies and ecofeminism, psychology, geography, urban planning and sustainability studies. It includes the EU’s largest civil society networks advocating on the environment, climate, sustainable development, local democracy and the European movement. It teams up with youth climate, social justice and women’s organizations, SMEs, universities and research institutes, mobilizing networks with thousands of CSOs, uniting millions of citizens and activating contacts to thousands of policymakers. In a large co-creation exercise, REAL_DEAL will develop, test and validate innovative tools and formats to propel deliberative democracy to the next level. It will test its innovations at citizens assemblies for the transition in at least 13 countries. We will scrutinize pan-European formats ranging from digital deliberation through our online platform www.CitizensGreenDeal.eu to in-person processes 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 EGD. It will validate recommendations on how to design such processes and how they can be applied by European institutions, Member States and civil society alike. Gender equality will be embedded into the project’s DNA. It pays specific attention to the leave-no-one-behind principle, fostering the engagement of disenfranchised groups that are disproportionally burdened by environmental damage. REAL_DEAL will develop a new model of environmental citizenship across Europe.