Trade associations rarely make their internal wiring visible. The Cyprus Vaping Association has done the opposite: it published a bare list of seven elected directors in June 2026, then published the same seven names again in September 2026 with offices attached. Read side by side, the two documents tell a cleaner story than most organisational histories manage — no additions, no departures, no quiet substitutions. Just a group of people who were elected, then allocated roles.
June 2026: A Founding Assembly Elects Seven Directors
The Cyprus Vaping Association was founded in 2026 under the auspices of OEB — the Employers and Industrialists Federation of Cyprus — with the main aim of promoting correct information and responsible communication about vaping. Its Founding Assembly was held in June 2026, and the announcement that followed was notably disciplined in what it chose to say: seven names, no hierarchy. That restraint is worth pausing on, because it is not how founding announcements usually read.
The seven people elected to the Board of Directors were Antonis Sotiriou, Christos Tamamounas, Stavros Charalambous, Christos Savva, Steve Towler, Kostas Nikolaou and Nikolas Papasolomontos. Not one of them was given a title at that point. The announcement closed the loop by explaining that the Board of Directors would be formed into a body at its next meeting — a distinction that carries real meaning in association governance. Election establishes who sits on the board; constituting the body is a separate step that assigns president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and any further portfolios. The founding record therefore captured membership without presuming office.
In August 2026, OEB announced the inclusion of the Cyprus Vaping Association in the ranks of its Member Associations, describing the move as further strengthening the representation of businesses operating in emerging and regulated sectors of the economy. The same announcement described the Association as representing companies active in manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, as well as in the export of vaping products, contributing to the development of a dynamic and outward-looking sector of the Cypriot economy. Those two sentences framed the context in which the seven directors were operating: a newly founded body entering an established federation, with a membership base spread across production, distribution and export rather than confined to a single link in the chain.
What the June 2026 record does not contain is equally instructive. There is no interim president, no spokesperson appointed by default, no acting treasurer named for convenience. The seven directors existed for a period as a group without a published hierarchy, which placed the responsibility for structure squarely on the next meeting rather than on assumption or precedent.
September 2026: The Same Seven, Now With Defined Roles
The Association elected its Board of Directors positions at a meeting in September 2026 at the Employers and Industrialists Federation (OEB) Building in Nicosia. The resulting roster is short enough to hold in mind: Kostas Nikolaou as President, Christos Tamamounas as Vice President, Stavros Charalambous as Secretary, Steve Towler as Treasurer, Nikolas Papasolomontos as Director of International Affairs, and Antonis Sotiriou and Christos Savva as Board Members.
Set that against the founding list and the overlap is total. Every individual elected in June 2026 appears in the September 2026 roster, and no name appears in the later document that was absent from the earlier one. The difference between the two publications is purely one of function: the first answers who, the second answers who does what. Four named offices, one international portfolio, and two directors serving without a designated office complete the picture.
The title of Director of International Affairs is worth handling carefully, because titles invite speculation. The published material attaches the phrase and nothing further — no description of duties, no list of counterparts, no travel record, no agreements. It is an office within the board, recorded as such, and that is the whole of the public information about it. The same discipline applies to the other six titles, which are stated plainly and without embellishment.
The Association’s Board of Directors page repeats the roster under the heading “The Board of Directors of the Cyprus Vaping Association,” and the titles there match the elections announcement exactly. That consistency between a news post and a standing reference page is the detail that makes the seven-name thread verifiable rather than merely asserted: two separate publications, produced for different purposes, describing the same group in the same way.
Why Continuity Between the Two Lists Carries Weight
For a membership organisation, the interval between electing a board and allocating offices is where continuity can quietly erode. Interim arrangements harden into permanent ones, a director steps back, a replacement is co-opted, and the founding list becomes a historical artefact rather than a description of the present. The Cyprus Vaping Association’s two documents avoid that drift entirely. The board that was elected is the board that took office, and the public record allows any member, journalist or authority to confirm it in a single comparison.
That matters because the Association has set itself a substantial agenda. Its stated goals, to be promoted through the collective action of its Members in collaboration with OEB, include implementing legislation prohibiting the sale of vaping products to minors and preventing commercial practices that could attract minors; promoting responsible business activity in the vaping products market; informing consumers and competent authorities on vaping-related issues; utilising the scientific debate around vaping as a potential low-risk alternative option for adult smokers; consolidating the professional ethics of Members in full compliance with national and European regulatory frameworks; and strengthening dialogue with the State for the adoption of evidence-based and balanced public health policies. These are stated aims the Association will seek to promote, not completed achievements, and the fourth in particular is framed as a goal tied to an ongoing scientific debate rather than as a conclusion of the Association’s own.
An agenda of that shape depends on stable, identifiable counterparts. A federation, a ministry or a regulator engaging with a trade body needs to know whom it is dealing with and whether that person speaks for the organisation. The public record maintained by CVA Cyprus, as some readers informally shorten the name, provides precisely that: a founding announcement from June 2026, an elections announcement from September 2026, and a board page that holds the two together without contradiction.
Continuity also has a practical benefit for the Association’s own members. The goals covering responsible business activity and professional ethics are collective commitments, and collective commitments are easier to sustain when the people who made them are the people still holding office. A wholesale or export business joining the Association can look at the September 2026 roster and see the same seven individuals who were present at the Founding Assembly three months earlier — an unbroken line from establishment to operation.
The Board of Directors page remains the standing reference, and it lists the same seven names with the same titles as the elections announcement: a President, a Vice President, a Secretary, a Treasurer, a Director of International Affairs and two Board Members. Anyone tracing the Association from its founding in 2026 to its first officer list will find no gap between the two moments, and no name in one document that is missing from the other.
