A newbie question...

The "eurogames" have their origins in Germany, and started to emerge in the 1970s, and started to flourish in the 1980 and 1990s, partly thanks to the Spiel des Jahres phenomenon.

In post-war Germany wargames were not-done and therefore designers had to look for other kinds of conflict, hence the low amount of games with a war theme coming from Germany. It's also something that comes back in the mechanics, as games focus more on cooperation and playing with eachother, rather than against eachother. This does not mean that they are cooperative games, but rather that they often reward the player who manages to stay out of conflicts asn much as possible.

Eurogames tend to focus on the family as it's target audience. This means that it needs to have relatively simple rules, so that the young ones can understand it. But it also needs a fair amount of strategy to keep the older players interested.

Eurogames typically have no player elimination, all players can keep playing until the end, and also have a chance of winning, no matter how remote. Eurogames also have a relatively short playing time (30-90 mins).

Theme is subservient to mechanics in most eurogames. This means that these games care less about simulation, and more about simplifying reality to keep the game mechanics streamlined. In some eurogames the theme is merely window dressing for the mechanics, but eurogames are rarely without any theme at all. Many unique game mechanics have been thought up in the past few decades and still every now and then a game comes out with original mechanics, or a unique combiation of older mechanics.

Finally, although luck plays a role in many eurogames, it is often minor, and most games should be decided by the player's actions.