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The life-time of polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFC) is one of the crucial factors for commercialization in high volume markets. Consequently, the research on degradation processes and phenomena and the improvement of life-time is an important area. A German- Canadian collaboration is funded by the Helmholtz Foundation (Germany) and the National Research Council of Canada. The project is focussed on establishing the relationships between the MEA microstructure and fuel cell performance, identifying the primary causes of the major failure modes and the corresponding degradation mechanisms and degradation rates and providing the fundamental understanding of the influence of the operating conditions on the degradation of the MEA on spatial resolved level. For this purpose at the DLR spatial resolved measurements will be performed with in-situ and ex-situ methods. Current density measurements with a printed circuit board (PCB) as a bipolar plate will be performed in order to investigate the local operating conditions and performance. After operation the fuel cell components will be analyzed with various methods in order to detect and to identify the different degradation processes. The in-situ and ex-situ investigations will be competed by modelling activities.