Volkswagen emissions-cheating scandal needs EU inquiry: French minister

PARIS (Reuters) - A European Union-level inquiry is needed into the emissions-cheating scandal at German carmaker Volkswagen AG and the probe should be extended to French carmakers too, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said on Tuesday. "It has to be done at a European level," he told Europe 1 radio in an interview. "We are a European market with European rules. It is these that have to be respected. It is these that have been violated in the United States." "While it is being done on Volkswagen, I think that in order to reassure people, we'll need to also do it for the French manufacturers, but I have no reason to think the French manufacturers will have conducted themselves the way VW did," he said. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Friday that Volkswagen, the world's biggest carmaker by sales, used software that deceived regulators measuring toxic emissions and that it could face penalties of up to $18 billion. The scandal engulfing Volkswagen, which admitted cheating diesel vehicle emissions tests in the United States, spread east on Tuesday as South Korea said it would investigate three of the carmaker's diesel models. (Reporting by Yann Le Guernigou; Writing by Andrew Callus; Editing by James Regan)