 The tribunal was established by the Convention on the Establishment of the Security Control in the Field of Nuclear Energy, signed in 1957.The purpose of the tribunal is to hear cases concerning liability over nuclear accidents.Formerly it also had the role of hearing cases concerning the violation of the European regional nuclear safeguards system operated by the OECD but that jurisdiction was suspended in the 1970s due to its duplication of the IAEA and the Euratom systems.