BERLIN—European owners of nearly nine million tainted Volkswagen AG cars may go empty-handed despite the agreement in the U.S. on a near $15 billion settlement to resolve the German auto maker’s emissions-cheating scandal.

Volkswagen, Europe’s leading car maker by sales, has agreed to pay up to $14.7 billion to settle legal emissions-cheating claims with regulators and owners of nearly 500,000 diesel-powered vehicles in the U.S.

Under the settlement’s terms, detailed in hundreds of pages of settlement documents filed Tuesday in a San Francisco federal court, U.S. motorists can either sell back or terminate leases of affected vehicles, or get them fixed to become compliant with environmental regulations. Volkswagen will repurchase vehicles at their September market value before regulators disclosed the auto maker’s emissions-cheating.

All consumers, regardless of their choice, will receive additional compensation of between $5,100 and nearly $10,000 each.

The U.S. settlement has raised concern in Brussels that the much larger number of European customers who bought tainted diesel-powered vehicles from Volkswagen wouldn’t receive equal compensation from the German car maker.