Abstract
The paper consists from two parts and generalizes traditional approaches to innovative transformations in various sectors of the EU marine industry. It is shown that shipping companies should permanently adapt and keep their business in sync with marketable changes and be ready to competitive struggle within the global economy. The critical solutions are determining the functional parameters of merchant ships at earliest stages of theirs structural designing, as and reengineering. Author offers a conceptual framework of the co-evolutionary approach to reengineering maritime transport. This problem-solving approach examines targeted ships in topological aspect as the multilayered configurations composed of various-of-a-kinds components, and in functional aspect as multicoalitional compositions. Basic attention focuses on identification of various constrains to innovative activity and choice of improvement strategies, for turning the European marine industry into the high competitive system. For completeness, in paper are presented three particular measures for an estimation of maritime transport success.