diff --git a/gcc/ChangeLog b/gcc/ChangeLog
index ba31106f7b4..825694ef97d 100644
--- a/gcc/ChangeLog
+++ b/gcc/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+2012-12-13  Richard Biener  <rguenther@suse.de>
+
+	PR middle-end/53476
+	* varpool.c (varpool_remove_unreferenced_decls): Revert to 4.7
+	behavior.
+
 2012-12-13  Kyrylo Tkachov  <kyrylo.tkachov@arm.com>
 
 	* config/arm/unspecs.md: Add copyright notice.
diff --git a/gcc/varpool.c b/gcc/varpool.c
index 56e23a73346..11c9e452333 100644
--- a/gcc/varpool.c
+++ b/gcc/varpool.c
@@ -358,8 +358,7 @@ varpool_remove_unreferenced_decls (void)
 	  && (!varpool_can_remove_if_no_refs (node)
 	      /* We just expanded all function bodies.  See if any of
 		 them needed the variable.  */
-	      || (!DECL_EXTERNAL (node->symbol.decl)
-		  && DECL_RTL_SET_P (node->symbol.decl))))
+	      || DECL_RTL_SET_P (node->symbol.decl)))
 	{
 	  enqueue_node (node, &first);
           if (cgraph_dump_file)