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Greece still needs its international creditors from the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund, but it needs them much less than when its now-despised bailout program began in 2010.

How so? The IMF and the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, project that Greece’s primary deficit – that’s the government deficit excluding interest payments – will be 1% of gross domestic product in 2012.

That’s not too bad. It’s better than the forecast government balances of France, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, and Luxembourg, among others. And it’s way down from the 10.4% primary deficit Greece recorded in 2009 – a sign of how much austerity the country has endured over the past three years.

The EU and the IMF haven’t been particularly good predictors of anything related to the Greek economy, and in November they were still saying Greece would record a 1% of GDP primary surplus this year. But still, a 1% deficit is in the same ballpark, albeit a pretty large ballpark.

That means Greece needs much less money from the euro zone and the IMF to continue paying pensions, civil servants and otherwise keep its government running. So, well done to everybody involved! The sound of champagne corks popping should be echoing through the hallways of euro-zone finance ministries, right?

Uh, not exactly. Anxiety over the Greek program and a possible Greek exit from the euro zone has never been higher. The Greek electorate is furious with its politicians for dragging them through five years (and counting) of recession. A standoff between Greece’s anti-bailout politicians and the euro zone threatens to push Greece out of the single currency area, imposing enormous costs on the Greek economy and destabilizing the euro zone as a whole.

You’d think given how far Greece has come – and the enormous cost of a euro-zone exit – that euro-zone policymakers would be bending over backwards to diffuse the anti-bailout backlash in Greece.

But instead, euro-zone politicians are seeking yet more from Greece. They want the government to repay its existing debt, which was just restructured in March, and all its interest payments. This will be no small feat: The commission projects Greek interest payments, even after the restructuring, will be 6.3% of GDP this year and 6.4% in 2013, easily the biggest interest burden in the 27-nation EU.

With interest payments this large and nominal GDP expected to drop sharply this year and probably next, full repayment is almost certainly impossible. Greece’s deficit excluding interest payments is small, a sign of how much both Greece and the euro zone could benefit from more debt forgiveness. A tough restructuring could transform Greece from the cause of the currency bloc’s collapse to a country with a small deficit, moderate debt, stagnant growth and high unemployment i.e., not much different from the other countries of the euro zone’s troubled periphery.

From the euro zone’s perspective, that would surely be better outcome than the cataclysmic financial crisis that could be triggered by a Greek exit from the currency bloc.