It prefers deciduous woods with clearings or open pastureland with small patches of woodland. It is also found in mixed and coniferous woodland, scrub, suburban areas and urban parks (Prigioni 1999). It is an opportunistic forager with an omnivorous diet, including fruit, nuts, bulbs, tubers, acorns, and cereal crops. It also consumes a variety of invertebrates (especially earthworms), wasp and bee nests, birds' eggs, carrion, and live vertebrate prey such as hedgehogs, moles, and rabbits. In the northern parts of its range, the species hibernates during the winter months. The home ranges of this species in Finland are very large, with a mean of about 15 km² (Kauhala et al. 2006), and their social system is peculiar, with large overlapping home ranges without any communal dens (K. Kauhala in litt. 2006). In Finland, it does not reproduce every year and the litter size is small (Kauhala et al. 2006).

In the European region, the Eurasian Badger (Meles meles) is widespread from the British Isles throughout Europe west of the Volga River up to the Middle Volga (Russia; both sides of the Volga in Nizhnii Novgorod Province), from Fennoscandia in the north to Central and Southern European Russia. It occurs from sea level to 2,200 m in the Alps (Spitzenberger 2002). Badgers from the Mediterranean islands of Crete and Rhodes belong to M. m. canescens (Abramov and Puzachenko 2013).

The global range extends from the European region to the Caucasus, the Anatolia region of Türkiye, east to Tajikistan, and south to the northern Arabian Peninsula. M. m. canescens occurs in the Caucasus, Iran, Iraq, Israel, and the southern mountains of Middle Asia (Kopet Dagh Mountains, the South and West Tien Shan Mountains). The Asian Badger M. leucurus occurs on the eastern edge of Europe eastward of the Volga River. The sympatric zone between these species is the country between the Volga and Kama rivers (Abramov et al. 2003). The Eurasian Badger is distributed in the west and north districts of Kirov Province, with the east and south of this province inhabited by the Asian Badger. Genetic studies revealed hybridisation between the two species in the contact zone there (Kinoshita et al. 2019).

The Eurasian Badger is listed on Appendix III of the Bern Convention. It is protected under national legislation in a number of range states: e.g., Schedule 6 of the UK Wildlife and Countryside Act, the Protection of Badgers Act (UK), and Schedule 5 of the Irish Wildlife Acts. In Albania it is considered Endangered. The species is found in many protected areas.