This article addresses the competition faced by exporters as a particular motivation to compute an effective exchange rate, discussing some important implications of the simplifying assumptions usually made regarding the selection of competitors and differences in product specialization. Firstly, the selection of competitors is not limited to the countries initially chosen according to their share in exports. Secondly, competition in third markets is evaluated in order to account for the different product specialization of each country. This different approach is then applied to the 12 euro countries using data for 2004.