Harry Govier Seeley named this genus in 1879 for a disarticulated partial postcranial skeleton that had been uncovered at Reach, Cambridgeshire, composed of a left dentary fragment, numerous vertebrae from the neck, back, and sacrum, parts of the pectoral girdle, humerus fragments, part of the left femur, left tibia, foot bones, ribs, and other fragments.
Europelta was by its describers placed in the Nodosauridae, forming a smaller clade Struthiosaurinae together with the European nodosaurids Anoplosaurus, Hungarosaurus and Struthiosaurus.