diff --git a/gcc/config/s390/s390.cc b/gcc/config/s390/s390.cc
index 9284477396d8fb6c2aa673c58a7ca5ec74d110fd..d9f10542473415c07d01c06e40b5630e435a9d47 100644
--- a/gcc/config/s390/s390.cc
+++ b/gcc/config/s390/s390.cc
@@ -13706,8 +13706,10 @@ s390_encode_section_info (tree decl, rtx rtl, int first)
     {
       /* Store the alignment to be able to check if we can use
 	 a larl/load-relative instruction.  We only handle the cases
-	 that can go wrong (i.e. no FUNC_DECLs).  */
-      if (DECL_ALIGN (decl) == 0 || DECL_ALIGN (decl) % 16)
+	 that can go wrong (i.e. no FUNC_DECLs).
+	 All symbols without an explicit alignment are assumed to be 2
+	 byte aligned as mandated by our ABI.  */
+      if (DECL_USER_ALIGN (decl) && DECL_ALIGN (decl) % 16)
 	SYMBOL_FLAG_SET_NOTALIGN2 (XEXP (rtl, 0));
       else if (DECL_ALIGN (decl) % 32)
 	SYMBOL_FLAG_SET_NOTALIGN4 (XEXP (rtl, 0));
diff --git a/gcc/testsuite/gcc.target/s390/larl-1.c b/gcc/testsuite/gcc.target/s390/larl-1.c
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..5ef2ef63f82f06347b2f41d06d7eaf8261490d73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/gcc/testsuite/gcc.target/s390/larl-1.c
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+/* Check if load-address-relative instructions are created */
+
+/* { dg-do compile { target { s390*-*-* } } } */
+/* { dg-options "-O2 -march=z10 -mzarch -fno-section-anchors" } */
+
+/* An explicitely misaligned symbol.  This symbol is NOT aligned as
+   mandated by our ABI.  However, the back-end needs to handle that in
+   order to make things like __attribute__((packed)) work.  The symbol
+   address is expected to be loaded from literal pool.  */
+/* { dg-final { scan-assembler "lgrl\t%r2," { target { lp64 } } } } */
+/* { dg-final { scan-assembler "lrl\t%r2," { target { ! lp64 } } } } */
+extern char align1 __attribute__((aligned(1)));
+
+/* { dg-final { scan-assembler "larl\t%r2,align2" } } */
+extern char align2 __attribute__((aligned(2)));
+
+/* { dg-final { scan-assembler "larl\t%r2,align4" } } */
+extern char align4 __attribute__((aligned(4)));
+
+/* An external char symbol without explicit alignment has a DECL_ALIGN
+   of just 8. In contrast to local definitions DATA_ABI_ALIGNMENT is
+   NOT applied to DECL_ALIGN in that case.  Make sure the backend
+   still assumes this symbol to be aligned according to ABI
+   requirements.  */
+/* { dg-final { scan-assembler "larl\t%r2,align_default" } } */
+extern char align_default;
+
+char * foo1 () { return &align1; }
+char * foo2 () { return &align2; }
+char * foo3 () { return &align4; }
+char * foo4 () { return &align_default; }
+